How Do ‘Comets’ Survive Traveling Through Space for Millions of Years?

Comets are like sleepy snowballs that zoom through space and wake up when they get close to the Sun.

Imagine you have a big snowball, it's made of ice, dust, and little pieces of rock. That’s kind of what a comet is like. But instead of sitting in your backyard, it’s floating way out in space, far from the Sun. It might be so far that it takes millions of years to go all the way around the Sun.

Now think about what happens when you leave your snowball outside on a sunny day, it starts to melt! Comets are like that too. When they get close to the Sun, the ice in them turns into gas and dust, making a bright tail we can see from Earth. But even though they lose some stuff each time they visit the Sun, they still have enough ice and rock left inside to keep going for millions of years.

Sometimes comets crash into other things, like planets or moons, but most just keep on traveling through space, ready to wake up again when it’s their turn to come near the Sun.