A small meteroid hit the newly located James Webb Space Telescope in May, removing one of its gilded mirrors off center, but did not change the orbital observatory’s schedule to become fully operational soon, NASA said on Wednesday.
The small space rock hit the $ 10 billion telescope in late May, leaving a small but noticeable effect on the telescope’s data, NASA said in a statement, noting that it was the telescope’s fifth and largest impact 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. “In-depth analyzes and measurements are currently being carried out.”
Engineers have begun a delicate readjustment of the affected mirror segment to help “undo 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 Webb Space Telescope. (NASA / JPL-Caltech / NASA / ESA / CSA / STScI / Associated Press)
Webb is parked in solar orbit about 1.6 million kilometers from Earth in January and is expected to give its first full-color images of space in July.
“This recent impact has not led to a change in the timing of Webb’s operations,” NASA said.
The most powerful space observatory
The Web mirror is designed to withstand the bombardment of dust-sized particles flying at extreme speeds into space, but the most recent impact was “bigger than the simulated one and beyond what the team could test on the ground,” he said. NASA.
The NASA-powered space telescope is considered the most powerful space observatory ever built, with a set of sensors and 18 gilded mirror segments working together to search for distant planets and galaxies from the earliest stages of the universe.
Engineers have designed the telescope to withstand accidental impacts from micrometeoroids – small space rocks traveling at super-fast speeds during predicted meteor showers near the Web’s location in space.
Last month’s micrometeoroid is not from any meteor showers, NASA said. The US space agency, calling the impact an “inevitable accident”, said it had now convened a team of engineers to explore ways to avoid future impacts from such space rocks.
The telescope is an international collaboration led by NASA in partnership with the Canadian Space Agency and the European Space Agency.
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