Using a comet to transport a probe

Can you imagine a comet that is interstellar, that we know its orbit and its characteristics, a probe or an observatory could be mounted on a comet, it would be like having a spaceship but that does not need fuel and will also travel very far.

There are several problems with resorting to this idea. First, landing a ship on the surface of a comet would be extremely risky. Comets have their spectacular tails because they are disintegrating. The tails are made up of dust, gases and all the material that is released. because the Comet is being vaporized by the heat of the Sun and in some cases violent explosions may arise.

When the ice inside the comet heats up, it transforms into gas and breaks the cometary crust. This is because comets are not only composed of water ice, there are also other gases and frozen compounds and not all materials vaporize at the same time. same temperature, some materials may only need a little solar heat to transform into gas and if they are under a layer of other, more resistant ice, they will end up exploding, breaking it.

In short, a comet is a battlefield, a ship could be destroyed or end up thrown into space simply because it does not have a firm point to hold on to; The second problem is that where the Comet is going there is no solar energy so the only source of energy available would be an atomic battery, it is the only thing we have right now, such as those that give energy to the latest rovers that NASA has. on Mars and those batteries end up running out after several decades.

Astronomers often say that there are billions of comets, in reality it is just to give a figure, we do not know how many there are, without a doubt there are many, many more than asteroids. The difference between comets and asteroids is that asteroids are rocky or metallic or have both. elements, some metal and some rock, and they orbit the sun within the zone of the planets, but comets are basically made up of ice and the vast majority are found beyond the orbit of Neptune, in the Kuiper belt or in the cloud. of Oort.

A new comet can appear at any time, and we cannot guarantee that the next one will not come directly towards the earth, if one comes, that had 15 km in diameter, putting us in the worst scenario, we would have had 626 days since its discovery to act and avoid a catastrophe that would have had dimensions similar to the impact of the chicxulub event in the Yucatan peninsula that led to the extinction or at least the end point to the era of non-avian dinosaurs and giant reptiles.

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