NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) was hit by an accident, which was hit by a micrometeroid that was larger than expected.
The incident occurred in late May and caused damage to one of its 18 main mirror segments. The collision meant that the team on Earth had to correct the distortion of the mirror that hit the meteor.
Fortunately, NASA said that the giant telescope can still operate at a level that is very sufficient for all missions that will be carried out by JWST, as quoted from The Verge, Friday (10/6/2022).
"We've always known that Webb would be exposed to an extraterrestrial environment, including harmful ultraviolet light and particles from the Sun, cosmic rays from exotic sources in the galaxy, and micro-meteor strikes in our solar system," explains Paul Geithner, technical deputy project manager at the Sun. Goddard Space Flight Center, in a statement.
JWST is NASA's latest generation of ultra-high-performance telescopes. The telescope was designed to search the furthest reaches of the Universe and look for stars and galaxies that formed right after the Big Bang.
NASA spent nearly billions of dollars building the JWST, and two decades to complete it. The telescope was launched into space at the end of 2021.
Once in space, JWST had to open parts of its complex mirror from the folded position during the journey, after which it had to go through a five-month instrument calibration process.
Since its launch, JWST has been hit by at least four different micro meteors. However, the size of the meteor is relatively small and its size is in accordance with what has been predicted by NASA.
Micro meteors are usually fragments of an asteroid and are smaller than grains of sand. However, the micro meteor that hit JWST at the end of last May was larger than predicted and what NASA had prepared.
So far, NASA engineers are still analyzing the impact of the meteor collision.
NASA actually has prepared JWST to be hit by particles in space during its lifetime. This is because rocks scattered in space are something that cannot be avoided in space. For that reason also NASA coated the JWST mirror with gold in order to survive the rocks.
During the testing period on earth, the United States space agency has carried out various simulations to test the strength of the mirror. But unfortunately NASA has never simulated a micro meteor of this size.