In the first, we had to find a crashed ship and see how they crashed and if there were any survivors. After doing a trivial (tutorial?) mission on the starbase you start of orbiting, we did two missions. Two other (experienced) players joined my crew. I played a quick 2-3 hour game yesterday.
There's also ship to ship combat, but I really didn't experience that. You can scan planets, you can transport down to them (but don't get lost, cause to transport back, you need to return to the transporter pad on the planet). You have a gun, a fire extinguisher and a repair tool in your inventory, plus anything you pick up.
You can upgrade components of your ship (I upgraded the engine to allow for longer jumps). The life support room has EV suits available (I guess if you're landing on a planet with harsh conditions). Ships seem to have a: bridge with a number of stations, a science lab, a weapons room, engineering, a lounge and transporters. There are five different ship models (one vaguely similar in style to Star Trek, another maybe to BSG, and another to Firefly).
You and up to four others control a ship with different roles (Captain, Navigation, Weapons, Scientist and Engineer), Taking on missions that will have you traveling, going on away teams and fighting bad guys. I would describe it as online artemis meets more traditional space exploration games meets FPS. So this game is in early access, but I decided to check it out.