Scan Rocks without spending fuel?

[rightfn]

Hi, I'm getting back into the game after a while. I have built a certain ship design where I want to drift past asteroids and scan them with my scanner in order to find the tasty ones.

As far as I know, the only way to scan asteroids is to target them, which immediately causes the autopilot to rotate the ship towards the rock and also to adjust the ship's course.

Unfortunately, this is killing my propellant reserves. Is there a way to scan these rocks without getting the propulsion system involved? Things I have already considered, but am not interested in as a solution, are 1) launching without autopilot module 2) disabling or choking all thrusters in the mechanic tab.

[Nellvan]

When you have nothing targeted, the scanner will scan the location of your mouse cursor. You just gotta try pointing at the same spot for abit, since it takes time to get useful results.

[Moon Cheese]

You need a specific ship part to do that. It's one of the USV upgrades. Then when you hover the mouse over a rock it will give a rough guess of what minerals are in it. A geologist on your ship may improve the accuracy but I'm not sure of that. I have noticed on small rocks it might list several minerals but when you laser it you only get a piece of the most prevalent ore.

[rightfn]

Originally posted by Nellvan:

When you have nothing targeted, the scanner will scan the location of your mouse cursor. You just gotta try pointing at the same spot for abit, since it takes time to get useful results.

.... I've been playing with controller. But I have no problem reaching for the mouse to do this, I just didn't think to try it. Thanks!