Comet catching

Comet catching is the process of "catching" comets or other similar icy bodies and diverting their orbits. This is often done to provide clean water ice resources for a new colony world undergoing terraforming procedures; melting a comet in orbit can be a cheap way of creating an ocean on the surface or increasing atmospheric humidity. Comets can also simply be parked in orbit and mined for ice.

Naturally, caution must be exerted when diverting the orbits of large bodies such as comets to avoid catastrophic collisions that can result in the total loss of viable planets.