Park the ship at least 400m away from the nearest edge of the settlement, and the NPCs will generally not find it, but it's still near enough to run over for a quick resupply if needed.
In fact i find coming in an SRV and dismissing the ship is a better idea. Often they do ignore SRV, at least if it's not on their way. I've been even adventurous enough to come in SRV to a ground CZ and parking it near another building, basically in the middle of the fight - a lot of times it just lives through the encounter and noone cares of it. Scavs are often tending to shoot it, but worst case again, you just lose your SRV, and you can carry two. And your ship is safe in the orbit. SRV is faster too, i'm the person that is using my car that is parked 200m away from my home to visit a shop that is 500m away from my home, yeah. P
I'm generally setting the carrier for a jump when I log off at night and then using the DBX to explore the vicinity when I log back on. The cutter is set up for mining now and I've actually cracked open a couple of cores, which I'd never done before. I was a bit close on the first one but I've still got the 6A prismatic and 2 Shield booster fitted so not much damage.
I'm thinking of a some kind of
carrier catch up explorer, for the cases when you're going somewhere with your carrier, and in parallel you're flying your explorer always (or not always) nearby while scheduling jumps and like always being ready to rejoin your carrrier again. A usual exploration DBX seems good for the job, basically what you need is just jump range, fuel scoop, DSS and an SRV, but i'm yet to try that for real. I. e. opposite to what you do, not staying at a point, but letting your carrier follow their road to the destination, while you may slack behind, if you find something intresting, and then rejoin at a point. But idk if viable, never tried yet.
For cores i've done this in a Keelback - a bit of engi for armor and 1500 integrity, but shieldless (no space for shields in a core mining Keelback). A little damage from time to time, but it's pretty survivable, tho you probably have enough space in your Cutter for everything. Yet to try for me again a deep space tritium mining, i tend to buy it instead, while not venturing too far. )