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The Deep Impact space probe has flown past Comet Hartley 2 offering a rare glimpse of a comet in full flight, the pictures show the comet to be around 1.5km long with jets of gas streaming from its surface.

Deep Impact used two visible-light imagers and one infrared sensor to gather never-before seen footage of the comet in flight, which Nasa scientists will now be spending hours poring over in an attempt to find further insight into the diverse properties and behaviours of what are some of the Solar System's most remarkable objects.

Malcolm Hartley (after who the comet is named), the Australian astronomer who first identified the body in a photographic plate from a sky survey undertaken in 1986, described how: “There’ll be enough data downloaded to keep researchers busy for the next five, 10, 15 years probably. It’s proving to be very interesting.”

Comets are thought to contain materials that have remained largely unchanged since the formation of the Solar System. They incorporate compounds that are rich in carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen. Intriguingly these are the elements that make up nucleic and amino acids, the essential ingredients for life as we know it; and there are some who believe comet impacts in the early years of the Solar System could have seeded the Earth with the right chemical precursors for biology.

It is for these reasons that space scientists are so keen to observe and research both comets and asteroids in an attempt to glean as much information as possible about these complex objects. Back in July, the European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission gained “up close and personal” images of Asteroid Lutetia, while on its way to its anticipated 2014 rendezvous with comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

The more that scientists can find out about these remarkable space objects, the better an understanding of the universe will follow.

For more information about comets, including teaching resources related to Deep Impact’s 2005 mission to Comet Tempel, why not visit the National STEM Centre eLibrary?

For more information about ESA's Rosetta mission, visit the ESA website.