Since a game can get very large, with tens of systems, hundreds of planets and thousands of asteroids, finding what minerals you want becomes only possible using the Geological Survey Report screen. In my opinion, the solution to limit that micromanagement is to improve this screen. The System View screen (F9) is comparatively clunky with long loading times and tedious searches. So here are some suggestions.
There's a check box to limit search to asteroids only. Currently, comets aren't included, it would be useful to change that box to "whatever asteroid miners have access to", regardless of changes on that point.
And since mining ships are often very slow (or engine-less and towed at slow speeds), outsystem asteroids/comets are sometimes way too far to be accessed in a reasonable time, so a "distance from primary" criteria might be nice. This is a minor point since, currently, far asteroids are a pain to survey anyway, with the auto-survey default orders limited to 10b km.
Choosing where to search is currently a single system, or all of them. Manually choosing multiple systems could be nice, or even simply systems you control (as set in the Galaxy screen). That would give a practical use to that tag. Searching systems controlled by another race could help you determine if an invasion is worth it.
Limiting sorium search to gas giants can help finding rich deposits for harvester bases.
Also, I wouldn't go into a new tech line for asteroid modules. The module costs as much corundium as a regular mine, but can operate anywhere. If it could operate on large bodies, automines would be useless, so there needs to be a limit. Giving the ability to increase that limit means that, at game start, when the module is most useful (scarce corundium supplies), many possible deposits are inaccessible.
Hope it helps Steve.