Mining Uranium in Space Engineers: Asteroid Locations and Ammo Recipes

If you have ever tried building rockets or artillery in Space Engineers, you already know the recipe ends with a small amount of a stubborn material called Uranium. It is the gatekeeper of high-tier weapons, and it likes to hide in inconvenient places.

This guide covers where Uranium spawns, what its deposits look like, and the recipes you need once you have refined a few ingots.

Why Uranium Matters

Like Platinum or Silver, Uranium comes in two forms: raw ore and refined ingot. The ore on its own is mostly inventory clutter. Refined into ingots, it unlocks late-game ammunition and feeds reactors.

It is also, at the time of writing, the rarest naturally occurring ore in the game, which is why early-game players almost never stumble onto it by accident.

Where to Find Uranium Ore

Save yourself the trip across planet surfaces. Since patch 1.189, planets no longer spawn Uranium at all. Your only source is asteroids.

Identifying a vein is straightforward once you know the visual signature:

• A streak of dark gray mixed with deep black running across the asteroid surface
• Visible under direct sunlight, often without needing an ore detector at close range
• More common on larger asteroid clusters than on the small chunks scattered around them

Bring an ore detector with decent range. Time spent drifting between rocks is time not mining.

Refining Into Ingots

Uranium Ore belongs in a Refinery, not an Arc Furnace. The base conversion is 100 Uranium Ore for 1 Uranium Ingot, and the cycle takes roughly 4 seconds per ingot at default efficiency. Refinery modules cut that time and improve yield, which is worth doing once your combat ships start burning through ammunition.

Ammunition Recipes

Beyond powering reactors, Uranium Ingots show up in four ammo recipes:

• Rocket: 55 Iron Ingot, 7 Nickel Ingot, 0.20 Silicon Wafer, 0.10 Uranium Ingot, 0.04 Platinum Ingot, 1.20 Magnesium Powder
• Small Railgun Sabot: 4 Iron Ingot, 0.50 Nickel Ingot, 5 Silicon Wafer, 0.20 Uranium Ingot
• Large Railgun Sabot: 20 Iron Ingot, 3 Nickel Ingot, 30 Silicon Wafer, 1 Uranium Ingot
• Artillery Shell: 60 Iron Ingot, 8 Nickel Ingot, 5 Magnesium Powder, 0.10 Uranium Ingot

The Uranium quantities per shot look tiny, but a full magazine of railgun rounds in a real fight adds up fast. Stockpile ingots before you commit to a fight, not during one.