Colony development is a very large personal investment and doesn't make sense at the very beginning of the game. The player can't even carry 1000 crew members, much less deal with the future expenses.
Many games shape their campaign as a huge tutorial, introducing new mechanics one step at a time until the player is ready to jump into the sandbox. A colony tutorial might make more sense towards the mid game, or at some point in the campaign where developing a personal base of operations makes sense. If the colony tutorial shows up too early the player won't have the resources to accomplish its goals, so if it shows up early it needs to stay available for a very long time. Maybe it won't time out at all, letting the player wander around the galaxy before coming back to try their hand at colony development.
The tutorial already has a player rescue a planet from ruin. Maybe as a next step they get the chance to guide its future development? In terms of story perhaps their industries broke down and need repair, or they want to develop more self sufficiency so that a future disaster won't hurt them again. Example goals might include colonizing a nearby, low quality world that has agriculture (no more starvation), repairing a few broken down industries (resource collection? maybe a discount?), bolster a few defenses (stable points? A star base?) and defend a pirate raid or two(action!). At the end of the quest chain the planet rewards you with a regular tithe, similar to how the "lost Hegemony world" tutorial gives a nice reward.
Would the player let to permanently keep the planets after putting all their effort into the colony tutorial? It doesn't make sense for the hegemony to give a planet to a random player, no matter how fancy they are. It may make more sense to consider a feudal system, where a very high ranking Hegemony person becomes a planetary governor. They get paid colony tithes, in exchange for growing and protecting Hegemony assets. That kind of reward isn't possible outside of having a very strong Hegemony commission, but they can definitely tease it as an incentive if the player signs up.