There's a difference between exploration and discovery, which I believe is the root of the FSS/ADS issue.
Not seeing that as the issue myself.
I don't consider a picture of a planet as being exploring it. For me, exploring means I'm at least in the general vicinity of the object, not half a lightyear away. Discovering a body is just the first step in exploration which is why I find the FSS problematic - it both discovers AND explores the body.
All it does is discover the planet. It cannot explore it for you. You will need to travel to the planet to explore its surface. I think the main issue here is that atmospheric planets are non-landable and so there for there is no need to travel to them now as you don't need to DSS them, but you can probe them if you want to.
But even when I did do that in the old method I certainly never thought I had explored that planet. All I did was travel to something that I had already discovered and let it scan automatically without doing anything. To me that is just travelling. I am not exploring anything unless I can get down on to thats planet surface.
Now if the next update is atmospheric planets with maybe even planets with basic plant life on it (no complex life, so no earthlike, it think they will take longer), that opens up a huge amount of planets to explore i.e. land on and actually explore it.
Having an optional module that allows separation of discovery and exploration would allow me to focus on the part of the gameplay that I enjoy, without detracting from the discovery element for those who don't wish to use it.
The seperation is still there depending on how you look at it. I don't see traveling to a planet I have already discovered for the ship to do a passive scan while not being able to land (because that update isn't out yet) is exploration. I see that as just travelling and scanning for credits and tags. There is no exploration involved from what I can see.
To me these mechanics look like they are designed around more planets being able to be landed upon. If atmospheric planets are the next expansion (I really hope they are), then there will be more reasons to fly to the planets that you don't need to at the moment, so you can explore the surface more.
The system is not without fault though in my view. The FSS gives you a bit too much information for my liking. I would prefer some of it you get from probing a planet.
The probing of the planets should give search areas for POI, not pin point locations. You only get pin point locations after you have done a composition scan on it (so you can return when you want to). I wouldn't mind seeing a wave scanner type thing on the ship, maybe in analysis mode, for when we are flying near the surface of a planet to find large POIs (not the small rocks). Or you land and explore in your SRV to find these places.