I expected they wouldn't make 2016, some of the monthly reports said they were still doing concept passes on some S42 locations, and hadn't started actually blocking them out yet, which seemed alarmingly late for something that was supposed to launch this year.
That they'd agreed to do it four weeks ago, and then cancelled two weeks ago imply they were trying to get something ready (and makes sense with what Chris was travelling back and forth to the UK to oversee urgently) but it didn't come together. Kinda crazy that when they started he said a three year development would be ideal, and anything past 2015 would get stale, and now we're talking 2017.
I kind of feel it's a bit like Age of Decadence, old trad rpg revival that took so long to come out that other studios took entire old trad rpg titles like Pillars of Eternity from concept to release, beating them to the punch, and then managed to release whole expansions before they were done. There's suddenly loads of new space games (Infinity, Ion, Everspace, Starfield, Infinite Warfare, Empyrion) and S42 could miss the resurgence it started.
It was confirmed for 2.5, for one planet to test it and for asteroid fields in the system for mining.
We're still waiting on Vaulting, which was confirmed for 2.3 and 2.4.