Planetary Charts sold by the Space Station Cartographer in exchange for Navigation Data turn wide-open planets into targeted treasure hunts. Four core chart families cover everyday exploration: Emergency Cartographic Data marks distress calls and wrecks, Inhabited Outpost Data marks commercial and industrial hubs, Ancient Artifact Data locates plaques, ruins, and monoliths, and Exosuit Upgrade Charts pinpoint Drop Pods, supplemented by Settlement Charts and Scrap Dealer coordinates. Always descend into the atmosphere of the exact planet you want to search before activating a chart from your inventory so the waypoint anchors locally rather than bouncing across space to an undesirable neighbour moon.
Forcing targets with the multi-chart trick
Veteran ship hunters never fly to every single icon an Emergency Chart produces because No Man's Sky enforces a strict rule: only one active HUD marker per specific building subtype can exist at one time. An Emergency Chart draws from five possible subtypes: Abandoned Building, Observatory, Crashed Freighter, stranded NPC Distress Beacon, and claimable Crashed Ship. If you want exclusively claimable Crashed Ships (such as hunting a system's Exotic or Interceptor), leave the other four unwanted markers unvisited on your HUD and keep activating fresh Emergency Charts, clicking past harmless 'similar building already marked' warnings until a chart consumes, until all four decoy slots are occupied. From that point onward, every chart you burn is guaranteed to pinpoint a claimable Crashed Ship until you leave the system.
Manufacturing Facilities and Minor Settlements
That exact same marker-slot rule applies to Inhabited Outpost Charts, which split across Trading Posts, Transmission Towers, Minor Settlements, and secure Manufacturing Facilities or Operations Centres. Leaving the Trading Post and Transmission Tower icons active on your compass forces follow-up charts straight onto Minor Settlements (great for checking extra Multi-Tool cabinets and buying wiring looms) and Manufacturing Facilities where solving the terminal alarm riddle rewards Factory Override Units for crafting recipes.
Zero-cost infinite scans via Exocraft Radar
Once you unlock Exocraft and their Radar Amplifier upgrades on the Space Anomaly, you rarely need to spend Navigation Data at all. A fully upgraded Roamer, Nomad, or Pilgrim Signal Booster scans on demand from the Quick Menu for Drop Pods, Resource Depots, Abandoned Buildings, and Alien Structures (guaranteed Monoliths or Plaques) at zero resource cost, while the Minotaur Radar Array adds direct free sweeps for Distress Signals, Secure Facilities, and planetary Sentinel Pillars.