Your post mostly deals with new content, but IMO the existing content could be handled A LOT better.

Right now, by far and away the most profitable way to explore at the moment is this: - Travel to system - Discovery Scan from the star - Open system view - Detailed scan anything that looks habitable or like it might be high metal content - Move onto the next system.

Sure you can use parallax to find objects beyond the range of your discovery scanner, but it's almost always more time-efficient to move on to the next system of the trillions in this game, and go for the low hanging fruit. You don't even need to leave supercruise to do any of this, so you never really get to see the cool visuals of looking at planets up close.

So most important to me would be to rebalance the existing content, add more variation, thought and incentive to actually go to the places you discover (and who knows, maybe have to deal with a little aggression in the process).

First off, every type of object should have the potential to be valuable under the right circumstances. Asteroid belts could be priceless if they contained high quantities of platinum, gas giants with the right rings or habitable moons, or any object which is unique enough to be scientifically valuable. This way there's a reason to really take a system apart, use parallax to discover everything, and visit lots of different stuff.

Don't show us what objects look like in system view when we discover them. Instead, give us some basic info, like radius, density, luminosity, day length. The player would then use this info to sleuth out which objects are worth visiting and DSSing. Increase the potential value of DSSing, but require players to get really close and drop out of supercruise to do it. That way we get to see the cool visuals, maybe get ambushed by pirates, and there is a greater risk:reward ratio. Maybe add different types of limited ammo, expensive probes, like a prospecting probe, habitability probe, or archaeological probe, that can yield huge rewards if used on the right object.

Finally, limit the Advanced Scanner to large hulls only, so that, since exploration is more valuable now, there's a real incentive to go after them.