Its not quite mining as we would know it - pull up the navigation window and click the icon with crossed pick axes - this will show you where mining zones are in a system. Nav your way to those mining areas and basically blast away at any moving asteroids in the debris field eg. Pittsburgh debris field. It is time consuming and dangerous (drogues etc. nearly always converge on your location) - you can also tractor beam any floating equipment from wrecks in the debris field. No actual planetary surface mining involved as far as I know.....

Yep, that's all you can do. It is unfortunately one of the most useless features in the game, as just sitting around twiddling your thumbs is probably going to make you more cash than mining.

I was fearing that but hoped there would be something more to it, oh well. It seems that the merchant "career" lost a bit of a glamour. It woulda been nice to act as a real miner =). Now i'm just looking for good lvl5.weapond for my new ship i bought after arriving leeds-system. Don't remember the name though =/.