I noticed you can fly into some of the asteroids because the hitbox is smaller than the visual model. This is with max details in the graphics settings. This is particularly pronounced in the larger rocks, where you can drop your ship in several times your own height deep, so you cannot be seen from the outside. You still show up on radar and can still be shot at, but you can also shoot from there yourself and without being seen you'll likely get the first shot, so it's a bit relevant.

One example asteroid this can easily be seen with: Bethesdee C-4, asteroid with id #115. Was going to add screenshots but I seem to have misplaced them.

Yes, this is because the progressive mesh degradation algorithm has a slight "deflation" effect in scale, so the collision hulls match closest to the "minimum" polygon count, which is what is used on mobile and such.

Long ago (decades), we determined it was better to have a slightly larger visual mesh, compared to the alternative of having an "invisible" physical mesh that extended beyond the visual perimeters (in some cases). Running into asteroids you cannot see would be worse.

It's a well-known issue. We may eventually push an update with updated, static meshes for all asteroids, and abandon our use of historical dynamic mesh degradation (which is no longer optimal or relevant); but that's not a super high priority right now.