Some quests/questlines with an objective to "explore that curiousity over there, and maybe pay X dust/strategic resources when you do so" require the use of an exploration ship to send a probe at the curiosity. 


However, if I own that system I should be able to just put that curiousity into the build queue like any other curiousity. If the search costs dust/resources, it should operate just like building anything else requiring resources- adding to the queue subtracts the cost from stockpile, and removing it from the queue (before construction has made progress) refunds the cost.

Flavor text post-exploration may not even need much, if any alteration. References to "your ships" in the text, for instance, can just be assumed to be the hidden vehicles/tools/etc used by your system to normally perform explorations.


Some of the objectives state that the fleet doing the searching must have a hero, and I guess that could stay as is. Though even that should be satisfiable if the owned system with the curiousity has a hero governor. Narrative-wise, it's not like governors just sit around all day for decades and never step inside a ship every once in a while.