Oh cool! Ok so you made those cities. By interacting with the panels you decided to start the mining sequence which makes voltark an economic hotspot and in the game spawns all those growing cities. They're not there unless you interact with the panels. Similarly there are other endings and big changes to the world based on things like this. eg if you start mining all the flora and fauna dies, so you won't find any of that anymore and the place gets all foggy and barren. But yes there is an interesting backlore about the universe, the planet and the mining corp but unfortunately there just wasn't a budget to implement it for the time being :(