Exploring

Summary
Exploring is an activity all pilots can do. Any ship is capable of exploring with various degrees of effectiveness. Mostly small scouts and fighters are a good candidate for this. While you or a ship you own is exploring open space in any sector, you'll often come across Lock Boxes, Data Vaults, Abandoned Ships, Anomalies and more.

Exploration for ships you own in space but are not flying is done passively and the area in space the ship explores will depend on the ship's fitting but your ship will both passively scan the area around it and can actively scan a larger area (by using long-range scan mode).

Another form of exploration is station scanning. This is done using short-range scan mode and can reveal information about the station, uncover new missions and even (under the right conditions) reveal how to make parts of the station for yourself or give you discounts or bonuses to trade at that station temporarily.
 * Lockboxes
 * Data Vaults
 * Abandoned Ships
 * Anomalies