The original concept was more powdery splashes of color. But in compromising with the contrast I wanted, it ended up looking like damage from an intergalactic paintball war.

I used a grenade in the Improvised Robotic Device image, but it was a bit low res for it's own stand alone image, so this one was created nearly from scratch. it's a M26 fragmentation grenade.

This went through 3 or 4 designs before I hit the one I like. I'm glad I didn't settle for an earlier version.

I drew the bump map (planet surface) in Photoshop, and spent too much time trying to get it just right, because only 10% shows up in the final image.

The results of my first experiments with a new 3d terrain program I just discovered. The moon was added in Photoshop.