Although the first images captured by NASA’s James Webb space telescope – the largest and most powerful in the world of its kind – have shocked the world, scientists say the device suffered permanent damage due to a series of d asteroid attacks in May.
According to a new published article, a group of scientists said that after finding out the performance of the James Webb during its commissioning phase, the telescope reported problems that “cannot be corrected.” They added that the telescope also suffered a “small effect everywhere, which is not yet measurable.”
“Currently, the biggest source of uncertainty is the long-term effects of the impacts of micrometeoroids that slowly degrade the primary mirror,” the scientists said in the report.
On May 22, the primary mirror of the James Webb Space Telescope was hit by six micrometeorites. Of these, the sixth strike did considerable damage. Initially it was not considered too big, but now the scientists ’new paper suggests it could be more serious than previously thought.
The impact “exceeded pre-launch damage expectations for a single micrometeoroid that triggered further research and modeling,” the report states.
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Although the damage did not compromise the resolution of the primary mirror of the space telescope, the engineers who designed the Webb believe the mirrors and parasol will inevitably degrade slowly due to micrometeoroid impacts, the paper said.
One possible solution could be to minimize the time spent looking in the direction of orbital motion that statistically has higher micrometeoroid rates and energies, the paper said.
In June, after the asteroid attack, NASA released a statement saying that Webb’s mirror was “designed to withstand the bombardment of the micrometeoroid environment in its orbit around Earth’s L2 dust – sized particles flying at extreme speeds “.
“While the telescope was being built, engineers used a mix of simulations and actual test impacts on mirror samples to get a clearer idea of how to fortify the observatory for its orbit operation. This more recent impact was more great than what was modeled and beyond what the team could have tested on the ground, ”NASA said.
The James Webb Space Telescope was built by NASA in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) at a cost of $ 10 billion.
Composed of one of the largest mirrors of a space telescope, Webb was launched on December 25, 2021 and since February has been orbiting the L2 point, almost a million miles, or 1.6 million kilometers, from the earth.