No cheesing this one. You really have to farm five hundred mineral nodes. Buying from vendors and blasting asteroids doesn't count.
Some tips, though!
-> Planet Bondar in the Alpha Centauri system is a great one to farm this. Landing on rocky desert biome will have dozens of mineral nodes all around. Those specific nodes can be mined in a fraction of a second, faster than looting containers.
-> holding the right mouse button makes mining way, way quicker.
-> make sure to have unlocked the personal atmosphere power to keep refilling your O2
-> consider using meds to recover O2 and run faster.
-> the forward-jetpack glitch also is a lifesaver here
With these tips in mind, took me less than an hour to get this achievement from scratch
You can find your total in the pause menu>status>exploration.
Good luck!