So far Frontier has talked a lot about combat in Elite Dangerous' upcoming Odyssey expansion, but not so much about how it'll affect other activities out among the stars. That's changed a little now though, with the developer outlining a few of the ways another of the space sim's core disciplines – exploration – will be affected come launch day.
The most immediate change to exploration will come in the number of landable planets available in Odyssey, with Frontier anticipating around a 20% increase based on its own tests in a limited number of regions. Scale that out to Elite Dangerous' entire procedural galaxy, however, and the number of traversable worlds will increase to "billions".
Notably, however, not all planets will be fit for disembarkation. Frontier confirms players won't be able to leave their ship to go a-wandering if the temperature and gravity of the environment outside is so extreme as to be completely unsurvivable.