Surely Exo Dynamics will have listened to Astroneer feedback and added an External Timer to the Research Chamber, so busy Astroneers can just glance at the Research chamber to know when their object is nearly complete? Well hopefully they are working on it!
Allow the Astroneer to keep tabs on the current research task easily by displaying an external timer on the control panel. This way a busy Astroneer can just glance at the Research Module, rather than having to open the control panel to see how much time is left. See picture: