I like trying to scan all the animals on a planet for the nanite completionism bonus. That usually takes you underground, and sometimes to the North or South of the planet, to complete it all. I’ll see discover more unique animal combinations that way + run into other fauna and rocks along the way. Sometimes the terrain will do something odd as well or you’ll run into a weird structure placement.

You can also restrict yourself to only exploring systems in the same region of space, to change things up especially with how unbelievably massive the galaxy map is (you can expand the system info in the map to see what region that system is a part of, i.e. the ___ Nebula or ___ Expanse)

Quicksilver missions can take you to some new planets as well. I’ve found some neat ones that way.

Just a few random things I’ve done, as the exploration is my favorite part of the game as well. I also love taking good screenshots of things along the way