But the direct hit on the mirror surprised NASA and is still being analyzed. NASA revealed the details of the micrometeorite impact in a blog post dedicated to the site.
“Between May 23 and 25, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope experienced an impact on part of the primary mirror,” I mentioned the NASA weblog. “Following initial assessments, the team found that despite a detectable marginal effect in the data, the telescope was still operating at levels that exceeded all mission requirements.”
NASA said 18 parts of the mirror can be customized in response to meteor impacts like this one.
“By adjusting the position of the affected clip, engineers can compensate for some of the distortion…although not all of the degradation can be compensated for in this way,” the NASA blog states. “Engineers have recently made the first such adjustment to the affected sector… Additional mirror adjustments planned to fine-tune this fix will continue.”
The exact size of a micrometeorite is unknown. It may not have been larger than a grain of sand, said Heidi Hamill, a planetary astronomer who has been involved with the telescope for a long time. We will use it to study our solar system. Even a small thing can cause damage due to the sheer speed with which it’s done The telescope rotates around the sun and periodically collides with a random particle.
This was a known hazard because although secluded in space, it’s not as empty as it seems.
“There is absolutely no scientific loss from this event. … This telescope is in space — we knew there would be small implications. We were surprised by a goal so quickly,” said Hamill.
She said the scientists expected such an effect regarding every five years on average.
Touted as the long-awaited successor to the still-functioning Hubble Space Telescope, this unusually complex observatory orbits the Sun in a position that keeps it regarding a million miles from Earth. It’s too far away for astronauts to visit, and it wasn’t designed to be repaired or hardware replaced.
Webb goes through a “commissioning” phase for several months, during which his instruments are calibrated and 18 hexagonal, gilded mirrors are positioned to function as a solid mirror regarding 21 feet in diameter.
So far, NASA has only reported successes.
“Astronomers are giddy at how well things are going (but also concerned not to be forgotten, yes, we can be superstitious too) and excited to get started with science!” shared University of PH astrophysicist Michael Turner Chicago in an email with.
The telescope, which was folded in on itself when it was launched last year, has thrived over as many days as it is Opening the sweeping sun visor Mirrors expand. The telescope took 29 days to reach its forward location, an orbital site called L2, where other telescopes worked safely and provided scientists with data on the abundance of micrometeorites.
In building the telescope, engineers used a combination of simulations and actual impact testing on mirror samples to get a clearer idea of how the observatory might be mounted for on-orbit operations. This latter effect was larger than planned and beyond what the team might have tested on Earth.
Webb is different from most telescopes: It’s wide open and the mirrors are bare rather than enclosed in a tube. The telescope was designed to observe the universe at infrared wavelengths, which are beyond Hubble’s detection range.
This requires very cold mirrors and tools, Because of this, mirrors are farther from Earth and the Sun at all times. NASA has announced that the “First Light” images will be released on July 12, but has not said what those images will show.
In fact, however, it produced an image of a star that was used to focus mirrors. In the background of this image are several galaxies whose light was emitted billions of years ago, and this has wowed astronomers, who predict Webb will look deeper (and into the past) into space than Hubble, which was launched in 1990.
Webb has several goals, including studying the first light in the universe, emitted a few hundred million years following the Big Bang. It will also look at the evolution of galaxies and study objects in our solar system, including small, icy bodies orbiting the Sun far from Neptune’s orbit.
