Recent photographs presented in a new study show that the damage to NASA James Webb Telescope's primary mirror caused by a micrometeorite impact in May is worse than previously believed.
The majority of the micrometeorite strikes on Webb's big mirror resulted in negligible damage. But one strike that happened in mid-May even caused the telescope to sustain permanent damage, according to a paper detailing Webb's performance during the commissioning of the telescope that was published on the academic preprint server arxiv.org on Tuesday.
A woman stands near a model of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland on April 2, 2015.
NASA James Webb Space Telescope Gets Permanent Damage From Micrometeoroid
The latest micrometeoroid strike caused lasting damage to the James Webb Space Telescope, according to a joint assessment from the Space Telescope Science Institute.
Despite NASA's assumption that passing micrometeoroids would carry space debris that would hit the spacecraft, it occurred last June and resulted in more substantial damages than anticipated.
The same report last week describing the harm James Webb experienced was released by NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Canadian Space Agency. The spaceship is still alive and will continue to operate despite the damage it incurred, despite these damages.
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However, NASA and other space organizations are working for strategies to prevent more disagreements over their spacecraft as they orbit the vast universe.
According to Gizmodo, micrometeoroids are common in space and dangerous to satellites, spaceships, and humans that go to other planets. James Webb Space Telescope saw the latest space debris that passed it by but still caused major damages beyond what it had anticipated.
Future missions would take into account the numerous effects it would have on space research.
Where The Damage Is Located
A picture of the C3 hexagonal part of the observatory's primary mirror, which was damaged, can be found in the report. "The single micrometeorite impact that occurred between 22-24 May 2022 exceeded prelaunch expectations of damage for a single micrometeoroid," says the NASA report (per Astronomy.com).
The amount of incoming starlight deformation, or wavefront error rms, is used to gauge the primary mirror's performance (root mean square). The C3 segment's wavefront error at the start of the mission was 56 nanometers rms, about the same as the wavefront errors of the other 17 segments of the main mirror. Wavefront error on C3 increased by the impact to 258 nm rms.
Spacecraft engineers reduced the inaccuracy to 178 nm rms by changing the location and curvature of each section. This has a discernible impact on the overall inaccuracy of the primary mirror. According to the study, just a tiny fraction of the telescope's surface was impacted. Hence the effect was minimal at the overall telescope level.
However, the influence prompts inquiries into the makeup of the space environment in which the JWST functions. The gravitational forces of the Sun, Moon, and Earth are in balance in this region in space, which is a million kilometers from Earth and offers a somewhat stable site.
While this is going on, NASA is contemplating ways to stop more damage, such as orienting the spacecraft to reduce the likelihood of a hit, for instance, by turning the mirror away from the direction of motion.
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