A micrometeoroid that struck the Webb space telescope in late May caused permanent damage to the spacecraft, according to a report from the Space Telescope Science Institute.
The report was released last week by NASA and European and Canadian space agencies. He described the telescope’s scientific performance until July 12, 2022, the day the telescope’s first images were released, and included an exciting first look at the planet Jupiter seen by Webb.
According to the analysis, the impact “exceeded expectations prior to the release of damage to a single micrometeoroid.” Webb’s team is studying how to predict and mitigate future impacts.
Micrometeoroids are pieces of rock that fly through space. When they revolve around the Earth, these rocks can reach speeds of up to 22,000 miles per hour and are a common danger to astronauts, satellites and spacecraft.
In early June, a NASA statement stated that a micrometeoroid hit one of the hexagonal mirrors of the Webb telescope between May 23 and 25; the new report estimates that the impact actually occurred between 22 and 24 May.
“We always knew that Webb should weather the space environment, which includes harsh ultraviolet light and charged particles from the Sun, cosmic rays from exotic sources in the galaxy, and occasional micrometeoroid shocks within our solar system,” Paul Geithner said. a deputy technical director of the project at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, in a June statement.
The mirrors of the Webb telescope were meticulously aligned in order to produce high-resolution images of very faint light sources in the distant universe. The recent report compared ground measurements of the optical quality of the mirror segments with the current quality of the telescope; they found a major error in the C3 segment.
Because the C3 segment is only one of 18 hexagonal mirrors that make up the telescope’s primary mirror, the micrometeoroid damage is relatively small at the full level of the telescope, according to the report.
Despite the damage, the team’s initial assessment indicates that Webb “must meet its optical performance requirements for many years.” Thanks to the precise launch of the telescope, it is expected to be operational for 20 years and will spend its entire term on L2, a point in space one million miles from Earth.
The big unknown, the team said, is the rate of degradation of the micrometeoroid mirror; in other words, how many more harmful space particles than expected will reach the $ 10 billion observatory. At the time of the June statement on the May impact event, the team detected four micrometeoroid strikes that were within their expectations for these events, but the larger event is cause for concern. If Webb is more susceptible to micrometeoroid impacts than scientists predicted, his mirrors will degrade sooner than expected.
The team may move Webb’s optics away from micrometeoroid shocks to protect its mirrors along the line, but for that to happen, the shocks must be anticipated. Webb was delayed a lot here on Earth, but for an observatory that was launched and launched without any problems, it was only a matter of time before space threw a curved ball at Webb scientists.
More information: Take a deeper look at our universe: Webb’s first full-color image is here