@Draver
What I expect has happened is that because the survey module was added to an existing ship rather than fitted at a shipyard, there was no citizen on board. It worked perfectly well in deep space, but once it arrived at a planet, ANY planet, it tried to add the missing citizen. If this is the cause, then the ship would have been stuck, even at a core world, if there was not a spare citizen available to allocate to the ship.
I thought I had parked it at colonies previously (maybe not) without a problem. This may be because it was still an enforcer(?) when I did this, which is a special case, but after I refitted it, it became a standard ship and needed the citizen.
Wondering why a survey module requires a citizen?