Stories like this make me long for one of my suggestions linked in my signature: for Exploration Leaderboards for records in the game:
IN-GAME STELLAR CARTOGRAPHY GALACTIC RECORDS LEADERBOARD: This would be a new competitive (non-combat) multiplayer feature for explorers where the game keeps track of discovery records for things like "oldest M type star", "youngest black hole", "largest ammonia world", and so on for dozens of categories. Each record would list the system and object name, the CMDR who discovered it and the date. The current record holder list could be accessed from anywhere via a Stellar Cartography button on the ship's GalNet menu under the cockpit's left UI panel. Whenever a CMDR scans a planet or star which broke a record they would be notified via a pop up after scanning, but in order to actually log the record and get credit for it the pilot would need to hand in the exploration data and sell it.
It would be sweet if we could easily see the records and record holders in game, to give us goals to strive for.
IN-GAME STELLAR CARTOGRAPHY GALACTIC RECORDS LEADERBOARD: This would be a new competitive (non-combat) multiplayer feature for explorers where the game keeps track of discovery records for things like "oldest M type star", "youngest black hole", "largest ammonia world", and so on for dozens of categories. Each record would list the system and object name, the CMDR who discovered it and the date. The current record holder list could be accessed from anywhere via a Stellar Cartography button on the ship's GalNet menu under the cockpit's left UI panel. Whenever a CMDR scans a planet or star which broke a record they would be notified via a pop up after scanning, but in order to actually log the record and get credit for it the pilot would need to hand in the exploration data and sell it.
It would be sweet if we could easily see the records and record holders in game, to give us goals to strive for.