I really like science fiction that involves world building. These are some of my favorites:

• The Sparrow
• Martian Chronicles
• The Dispossessed
• Left Hand of Darkness
• Xenocide / Speaker for the Dead
• Piranesi (no spaceships but still feels like sci-fi)
• Hyperion Cantos
• Dune
• Farmer in the Sky
• Beowulf's Children

The expanse

The Bobiverse

This might not be specifically what you're after, but the Rama series by Arthur C Clarke has world building after book 1, and doesn't linger in one place plotwise (although most of the setting is in one place, albeit a huge place).

Even if it doesn't fit your spec completely, if you haven't read it, it should be on your list.

Anything by Alastair Reynolds is pretty big picture. Revenger is about space pirates with crazy unique lore. House of Suns spans tens of thousands of years and the whole galaxy. Terminal World is all on one planet but the concept is so unique it goes everwhere from a sci-fi wonderland to a western to airship pirates.

The Gods Themselves by Asimov stays pretty local to earth/the moon but there's whole other dimension, too.

Ringworld by Larry Niven

A Deepness in the Sky is also by VV and is, IMO, so much better than AFUTD. If you haven’t read it yet, you ought!

Children of Time is also exploration based. And good. But not nearly as good as a A Deepness in the Sky.

The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch by Phillip K. Dick

The Freeze-Frame Revolution by Peter Watts.

Not so much planets, but the galaxy.

Foundation series by Isaac Asimov

Ender’s Game series by Orson Scott Card

Blackwood & Virtue series by Bennet R Coles

Lots of good suggestions in here. Id like to echo :

• Anything Alastair Reynolds (particularly Revelation Space)
• Hyperion Cantos
• Ender/Enders Shadow series
• Children of Time/Memory/Ruin
• Bobiverse
• The Expanse

Also adding:

• Aurora by KSR
• Project Hail Mary

haven't seen yet mentioned Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy