That prospect turned me into a serious shopper for trip cancellation and interruption insurance (one policy usually covers both), a product I had always dismissed as a rip-off. Like other value-oriented consumers, I had seen no need to add several hundred dollarsâ worth of vacation insurance to the price of a vacation. Until that trip. Since then we have insured a couple of other trips, but never needed to make a claim. The only time we came close was in the wake of 9/11.
Comet Facts. Comets, like asteroids, are small celestial bodies that orbit the Sun. However, unlike asteroids, comets are composed primarily of frozen ammonia, methane or water, and contain only small amounts of rocky material. As a result of this composition comets have been given the nickname of dirty snowballs..
Ice, in this case, doesn't mean water, but frozen gasses. As the comet approaches the sun, it warms up a bit, and some of the ice thaws. You even get some violent eruptions where subterranean pocket of gas force their way to the surface. So, yes, every time the comet comes around, it does lose a bit of matter. Most of that stuff follows more-or-less the same orbit as the comet itself, and becomes part of the cloud of debris and ice floating thru space next to it. Some of it even settles back on the comet. The thing is, the comet doesn't lose very much mass each time around.