It is known that the ‘James Webb Space Telescope’, which has not even entered into full-scale observation, recently collided with a small-sized micrometeoroid.
A micrometeoroid is a rock mass smaller than a grain of sand regarding 1 mm in size orbiting in the solar system. The collision with micrometeoroids scattered throughout the solar system was expected, but this collision was analyzed to have exceeded the expected range.
According to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and foreign media on the 9th, the meteorite collided with C3, one of 18 mirrors that make up the main mirror of the James Webb Space Telescope on the 23rd-25th of last month. The James Webb Space Telescope has collided with a micrometeoroid five times since its launch in December of last year, with this one being the largest.
The operations team announced that the impact of the crash was minimized by fine-tuning the C3 mirrors to offset the dent in the crash.
The James Webb Space Telescope is located at the second Lagrange point (L2), where the gravitational force of the Earth and the Sun is balanced. Because L2 is regarding 1.6 million kilometers from Earth, it cannot be repaired by a space shuttle like the Hubble Space Telescope. L2 is also an environment in which dust-sized particles pass at very high speeds. The James Webb Space Telescope was built with this in mind, but it stunned scientists when it collided with a larger-than-expected micrometeoroid.
NASA said it is conducting an analysis with a team of experts to find ways to reduce the impact of micrometeoroid impacts in the future.
“Even following successful telescope launch, deployment, and mirror alignment, James Webb’s initial performance still exceeds expectations and is designed to perform perfectly,” NASA said. The release is still going smoothly, he added.
The James Webb Space Telescope is the largest and most powerful space telescope in human history. In addition to NASA, countries around the world, including the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), have collaborated on this next-generation telescope, and its main mission is to observe events that occurred in the early days of the universe.
We are excited to see what survivable planets the James Webb Space Telescope will find in the future.
Source = Media Bamboo
Arrangement = Reporter Hyungi Kim [email protected]
