Exploration to the center in Spore requires three very important things on your ship: the fastest interstellar drive, a black hole key, and the maximum amount of energy for your ship. Therefore, if you want to go to the center of the galaxy, you will probably want to do it fairly late in the Space Stage, when you can get and afford all of these things. The reason you need the fastest drive is because your range decreases as you get close to the core, but at the fastest drive it doesn't decrease all that much. The reason you need a black hole key is to warp around the galaxy instead of hopping from star to star. Finally, you want maximum energy because you are going to expend a lot of energy on your journey. However, exploration around the spiral arms and such only really needs a good interstellar drive.

There are other things you will want with you as you explore, but are not necessary, strictly speaking, to do so. These things range from behaviors to other items.

• Lots of Sporebucks for a variety of reasons. Mostly to pay for refueling and repairs and to buy colonies
• Colonies. Wherever you find an uninhabited system far from home, set up a colony with plenty of defenses. These are your outposts.
  
• Weapons. Preferably all weapons should be maxed, but you can get by with just the Mega Laser.
• The terraforming rays to improve planetary conditions
  
• A hold of plenty of flora and fauna. Remember that cargo items stack to 99 with no change. You can get 99 of each element of a food chain and it still only counts for 6 slots. This is highly advised, as it lets you set up T1 colonies extremely quickly, wihtout having to find a local planet to pilfer from. A full T3 planetary food chain takes up 18 slots.
• A friendly attitude. The more races you are friendly or allied with, the less attacks on your home planets you will be forced to defend against.

There are a few bonuses to exploring. Traveling nets you a badge in of itself (Frequent Flyer) and leads to various other badges and achievements as well. These include meeting new civilizations (represented by the blue radar lines around a solar system), finding artifacts (yellow radar lines), and finding rare spatial anomalies. These can range from binary stars to black holes, and work towards netting you another badge, which will increase your rating even more.

Exploration should be the culmination of the Space Stage for your civilization. Setting out, fighting or allying with the warlike race near the core, finding out what lies at the center of the universe, exploring the spiral arms to find new colonizable planets, and assimilating new civilizations are all part of your agenda as you expand away from your birthplace. We wish you the best of luck on your brave journey!