Am I missing something really obvious in finding morkite in solo play?

I've been enjoying solo play since the free weekend, but have been dying on or abandoning 99% of my solo mining missions, which follow this pattern:

• explore
• get lost, try to figure out the map, which is a weird 3D thing that I have a really hard time parsing
• stumble around fighting swarms until I run out of ammunition
• if I'm lucky, I've found enough nitra to call a supply pod, which re-arms me enough to wander around some more
• dig through all the dirt I can find to expose more caverns
• find the caverns impossibly huge to navigate and explore
• fight more swarms, but run out of nitra to call resupplies
• die
• or, conversely, abandon the mission after 30-40 minutes of wandering around and not finding morkite

I am:

• using flares to light my way
• when I can find dirt, digging out the dirt to expose more cave areas
• using Bosco to mine things too high for me to reach (but this doesn't seem to produce nearly as much as mining myself
• trying to explore 100% of the caverns methodically and thoroughly

Is there **any** way to get morkite to reveal itself on the map, or any class or tool I can find to help find it? I've completed, I think, 1/20 missions I've tried; every other time I seem to have explored 100% of the map, but still can't find morkite, and inevitably die / give up.

(once, I completed the mission but couldn't find my way back to the pod in time; lesson learned about getting back before summoning it).

EDIT: thanks for all the thoughtful replies! It's more than I can manage to respond to them all individually, but the tips about the scanner have been helpful, as has the encouragement to keep moving, don't sweat the small stuff, and press on to the final cave. I'm still struggling to find the final cave sometimes! I did know most of the evident stuff (dirt signifies a cave behind it, put minerals in the MULE, etc.), but I'm sure these tips will be useful to others who are also struggling!