I personally think that what makes cortex command feel "dead" is the lack of frequent updates or video's/logs of whats going on.
if i could atleast have a peek at whats going on in the team i would be more hyped to play cortex command, and if updates were as frequent as one every one-two weeks i think more players would be willing to play and mod the game = more populated workshop
the updates need not add alot of things that it would break mods, just more content and polish.
i hope the team reads this and considers it

The DRL twitter bot tweets about CC updates ever so often.

Not sure if there is an separate official, publicly visible changelog anywhere.

The game is still being worked on, no worries. From what I understand though is that Data himself wants to focus more on making Planetoid Pioneers a thing, at least for now.

We also get busy with non CC-related things as well. Since our (content dev) work is for the most part volunteer, it's not something we can invest a lot of time in compared to a job.