I notice that there is this prospecting mission counter.
I alos notice that the map says alot of stuff about what stuff is in any given sector (planet/asteroids, bases, faction status, bots, etc).

How about now that we have mining that players could assemble a prospection map for minerals. That is, give the 'mineral scaner' some good useful thing. You scan more then 30 rocks in the sector (more or less as per prospecting mission thing), and when you look at this sector from the map, it shows the mineral ores that can be mined here... :)

Something like this should be implimented. Not as an official map, like the faction bot maps, but something tracked by the player. Not sure what, but having to write EVERYTHING down to actually be able to do useful trade or mining consistantly is annoying.

Yep, thats why I am suggesting it. Even if it takes effort on the player's part (and thats probably good), it is something I am looking forward seeing in game.
Little details like this, make things more enjoyable.

Each piolet should be able to accumulate a client side database of sectors that they have scanned and have that update on there sector map when viewing which sectors contain what, ie bots, statiosn, and now minerals. By keeping the info on the clients side it's personal to just what they have found so far, and the server does not have to keep track of everyones infomation.