Fucking hell, this Elite Dangerous update coming soon is going to be fucking AWESOME
They've made major changes to both Exploration and mining.
The way mining worked before you'd pop into a RES (Resource Extraction Site), fly up to an asteroid, launch a Prospector limpet (a little robot that can be programmed to do different talks such as prospecting, collecting resources, transferring fuel, repairing other ships) and that will tell you what's in the asteroid in terms of mineable materials. You then get a mining laser and zap the asteroid which cuts into the surface and releases materials.
It was always a chilled out thing to do if you thrust your ship away from pirates and had some mellow music playing.
But now they've added some real depth to it. You can still do things the old way if you want but if you want more depth you fire a Prospector limpet into the asteroid and it scans it. Scanning reveals surface materials, sub-surface materials and fissures.
You blast the surface ones with a mining laser like you did before, you get the sub-surface ones with small explosive charges and the fissures you blast with a bloody great big seismic charge which blows the asteroid into different pieces. Awesome.
I have to say that the guys doing the sound effects for this game are doing a fantastic job. This is hands down the best sound effects I've ever heard in a video game.