Right in the kiss.
Looking shot
NASA has released images of its James Webb Space Telescope’s mirrors after they were hit by a larger-than-expected micrometeoroid.
While the size of the cosmic particle that struck the observatory in May was larger than the team had prepared for, the damage was fortunately confined to just one of the observatory’s 18 mirrors, as seen in images included in a forthcoming peer-reviewed study by NASA and its Canadian and European partners (the damage can be seen in the lower right corner of the second image below).
But the team is not out of the woods yet. NASA scientists are still trying to gauge the true impact that micrometeoroid impacts could have on the observatory’s operations.
Boeing!
Micrometeorite strikes were expected to be a common occurrence long before the telescope was launched.
“Inevitably, any spacecraft will encounter micrometeoroids,” the report said. “During commissioning, the wavefront sensor recorded six localized surface deformations of the primary mirror, which were attributed to a micrometeoroid impact.”
These deformations occurred at a “rate of approximately one per month,” according to the report, which was “consistent with pre-launch expectations.”
The 19 impacts have so far had no particularly noticeable effect on operations – except for one. This micrometeoroid “caused a significant uncorrectable change in the general shape of this segment.”
The good news is that “only a small portion of the telescope area was affected,” according to NASA.
Bent mirrors
Scientists are now trying to get ahead of the problem by investigating whether the collision with C3 was a “rare event” that happens “only once every few years,” or whether pre-launch modeling was wrong about the frequency of this kind of significant impact.
Despite the collisions, the ground-breaking observatory still exceeded expectations “almost everywhere,” NASA noted, with instrument sensitivities higher than expected on the ground.
During the development of the telescope, scientists took into account the slow degradation from the impact of micrometeorites.
While the collision is certainly an exciting moment that came even before science operations began, scientists are still confident that we still have years, if not decades, of amazing observations to look forward to.
READ MORE: Micrometeorite damage to the James Webb Space Telescope captured for the first time [Astronomy]
More about the observatory: James Webb’s hard drive is extremely small
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