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The powerful imaging equipment onboard both the Hubble telescope and the Rosetta probe has captured the dramatic fallout of an asteroid collision which is believed to have occurred in early 2009. The debris from this epic collision is believed to stretch for hundreds of thousands of kilometres, as shown in the image below:

Colin Snodgrass from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany, worked on the Rosetta data and describes how the event offered a unique observing opportunity for researchers studying the Solar System: "If you look at the literature on 'recent' asteroid collisions, they tend to talk about things occurring in the past million years or so - that's recent on geological timescales. But on the timescales involved in this event, we're really catching it in the moment of happening.”

Two groups working independently studied the impact, and although they initially believed they were looking at a comet, on closer inspection they soon agreed that did not have the shroud, or coma, of gases enveloping its main body; nor was it moving in a direction expected of a comet in that part of the Solar System. But the combined research power of Hubble and Rosetta soon revealed reveal the object's true nature – that it was in fact a large rock followed by a wide band of debris blasted off its surface by the impact of a much smaller object that was itself most probably vaporised in the impact.

Further research has suggested that the smaller impactor was probably about three to five metres wide, and the pair were calculated to have collided at high speed, at about 18,000km/h. This encounter was as powerful as the detonation of a small atomic bomb, the scientists noted.

For more information on asteroids – in particular the potential impact of an asteroid colliding with Earth - why not visit the National STEM Centre's eLibrary of teaching resources?