A Meteorite Hit James Webb’s Mirror
Meteoroid attacks are inevitable for any spacecraft. Even the James Webb experienced one such injury between May 23 and 25. Apparently, the performance of the telescope is still above expectations. Between May 23 and 25, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope was impacted by one of the C3 primary mirror segments. Events of this kind were foreseen during the construction and testing of the mirror on Earth. In fact, micrometeoroid collisions are unavoidable for any spacecraft that is regularly subjected to multiple collisions during scientific missions.
The team that evaluated Webb’s performance after the impact found that, despite the small effect found in the data, the telescope still performed flawlessly. In fact, he does so at a level that still exceeds all mission requirements. Extensive analyzes and measurements are currently being carried out. In any case, the space observatory is quite capable of performing the scientific tasks for which it was created.
In orbit around the L2 Lagrange point of the Earth-Sun system, Webb’s primary mirror is designed to withstand the bombardment of dust particles traveling at high speeds. During the construction of the telescope, engineers used a combination of simulations and real test impacts on mirror samples. This was done in order to get a clearer idea of how to book an observatory to work in orbit. However, the impact Webb received in May proved to be stronger than what the engineers simulated, or what could be physically verified.
