A small meteoroid struck the newly deployed James Webb Space Telescope in May, leaving one of its golden mirrors out of alignment, but without changing the observatory’s orbiting schedule so that it could be operational soon, NASA said Wednesday. .
The small space rocket hit the $ 10 billion telescope in late May and left a small but noticeable effect on the telescope’s data, NASA said in a statement, noting that it was the fifth and largest hit in the world. telescope since its launch in December.
“After initial assessments, the team found that the telescope was still operating at a level that exceeded all mission requirements,” NASA said. “Exhaustive analysis and measurements are being done”.
Engineers have begun a delicate readjustment of the impacted mirror segment to help “cancel out some of the distortion” caused by the micrometeoroid, NASA said.
This combination of images provided by NASA on May 9 shows part of the Large Magellanic Cloud, a small satellite galaxy in the Milky Way, seen by the retired Spitzer Space Telescope on the left, and the new James Space Telescope. Webb. (NASA / JPL-Caltech / NASA / ESA / CSA / STScI / The Associated Press)
Webb was parked in a solar orbit about 1.6 million kilometers from Earth in January and is expected to give its first full-color images of the cosmos in July.
“This recent impact did not lead to any changes in Webb’s program of operations,” NASA said.
The most powerful space observatory
Webb’s mirror was designed to withstand bombardment with dust-sized particles flying at extreme speeds in space, but the most recent impact was “larger than modeled and beyond the team could have tested on the ground, “NASA said.
The NASA-managed space telescope is considered the most powerful space observatory ever built, with a set of sensors and 18 gold-plated mirror segments working together to search for distant planets and early galaxies. stages of the universe.
Engineers designed the telescope to withstand the occasional impact of micrometeoroids: small space rocks traveling at ultra-fast speeds during meteor showers near Webb’s location in space.
Last month’s micrometeoroid was not from any meteor showers, NASA said. The U.S. space agency, calling the impact “an inevitable accidental event,” said it has now convened a team of engineers to study ways to avoid future impacts of similar space rocks.
The telescope is an international collaboration led by NASA in collaboration with the Canadian Space Agency and the European Space Agency.