Washington: NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), got pelted by a larger than expected micrometeoroid at the end of May - first noticeable impact since its launch six months ago.
NASA is not much concerned though it but said the impact caused some detectable damage to one of the spacecraft’s 18 primary mirror segments.
Since its launch six months ago, JWST has been hit by at least four different micrometeoroids, according to a NASA blog post, but all of those were small and about the size of what NASA expected the observatory to encounter.
A micrometeoroid is typically a small fragment of an asteroid, usually smaller than a grain of sand, NASA said.
The one that hit JWST in May, however, was larger than what NASA had prepared for, though the agency didn’t specify its exact size.
NASA admits that the strike, which occurred between May 23rd and May 25th, has caused a “marginally detectable effect in the data” and that engineers are continuing to analyze the effects of the impact.
The impact means that the mission team will have to correct for the distortion created by the strike, but NASA says that the telescope is “still performing at a level that exceeds all mission requirements.”
The next-generation, $10 billion telescope was successfully lifted off to space (5:50 pm India time) from Europe's primary launch site in French Guiana, South America, atop a European Ariane 5 rocket in December 2021. It reached the final orbit in space on January 25, 2022, after a month of space travel.
NASA expected JWST to get hit by tiny space particles during its lifetime; fast-moving specks of space rock are just an inescapable feature of the deep space environment. In fact, NASA designed the telescope’s gold-coated mirrors to withstand strikes by tiny space debris over time.
After an impact occurs, engineers can individually adjust the 18 primary mirror segments on the observatory to keep the mirror as a whole finely tuned.
As the JWST team continues to evaluate the impact, NASA is focused on better understanding both the particular event and the environment that the observatory will experience throughout its mission.
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