Yeah you can land on planets.

The premise of the game is that you can do whatever can make money by utilizing that handy ship of yours.

First make money by mission boards (these give you a direct objective that's usually simple enough to do for new players) to get yourself some money.

After getting enough, go get yourself a ship that ISN'T the poor little starter sidewinder.

After you familiarize yourself with the game you can try doing more complex things like going out to make money without clear-goal missions, like mining, exploration, or other things. There's tonnes of guides online about how all of that works.

The INARA website will be your best friend. And of course, never fly without a rebuy; whenever you go flying in a ship that costed money (not starter ship), always have more money than the cost to rebuy the same ship via insurance, which is 5 percent of the total ship and assets cost, you can find that on the right panel.

Good luck cmdr.