Detailed tutorial by Laurent Renaud describing modeling of planet explosion using 3D Studio Max 2010.
As instruments were used Particle Flow system for particle management and some elements of max script for fragmentation and explosion animation.
No max script knowledge is required, the author will try to walk through most of the basic commands in Particle Flow.
In tutorial are used SDeflector objects, Particle Flow operators such as: Birth Script for sphere fragmentation, Collision for asteroids collision, Speed and Spin for particles variation, Spawn for more detailed fragmentation.
3D Tutorials 
Detailed tutorial by Laurent Renaud describing modeling of planet explosion using 3D Studio Max 2010.