How do you think Scanning is going to help the Exploration mechanic?

There's no direct answer, but they can give insight on the design of the scanning system which will relate to Exploration. They've had a big discussion with John Crewe (the Vehicle Director) who has to be talked to regarding any Vehicle Team work. JC went through the entire radar and scanning infrastructure, looked at all of the designs, and created a radar/scan bible of how they want it to work. In that, they discovered how they want to finalise scanning information, how they give Players that info, and how that info is stored. Previously to this there was Surface Scan (shows Ship Health, Names) and Detailed Scan (Passengers' Name & Health). This worked great for ships and mine-ables, but not for other things like signs and cups. So the Scan backend is currently being changed to hold technically arbitrary info, which will allow for the storage of any info on mine-able rocks, info to help Players get the optimal level to mine, info on all of the contents inside a rock, info on passengers, their faction, their health, info on cargo, and what type of cargo, such as illicit or stolen cargo. They're broadening how they can store the info, and what info can be stored, into a data model that they could technically store and put on anything. With that data model, they could put it on an arbitrary item, and design could attach arbitrary info to that item, which could lead into "random data mission access" stuff, such as a mission that requires you to go to a specific location, or acquire someone's stolen cargo - essentially anything could be stored in that arbitrary info box. They could hook up the Mission System to install and be able to read this stuff, so that then the Mission Devs could act on this info that's now available, to create a mission that might say, "steal this cargo, and then sneak into this area to avoid scans by authorities." So the entire Scanning System data structure has changed to allow this bigger and broader gameplay that they want. Regarding Exploration, if you come across a data item/device, that device could be scanned, info could be recovered from it and displayed to the Player, and that info could be relevant to a mission, or perhaps it's a note that another Player kept on them which details the location of where they've stored valuable resources and what the security combination is to access them. This will open up doors for design to make interesting missions, and will hopefully also enable the Devs to provide tools for Players to put info into scan data themselves to make interesting mechanics and gameplay. (I understand this to mean: imagine if a Player could own a tablet, such as the one featured in the Squadron 42 Vertical Slice that Trejo had before she was captured, and on that tablet the Player could store some info which could be valuable to other Players one way or another).