Meteoroid hit has caused 'significant uncorrectable' damage to James Webb Space Telescope

[milestogo]

NASA has reported that a meteoroid hit on the James Webb Space Telescope has caused "significant uncorrectable" damage to one of the panels it uses to stare into deep space. The orbiting observatory was launched last December and recently released a full set of new observations, including what is said to be the "deepest" and most detailed picture of the cosmos to date.

Like any spacecraft, it has encountered micrometeoroids and its sensors have detected six deformations on the telescope's primary mirror panels that have been attributed to strikes. "Each micrometeoroid caused degradation in the wavefront of the impacted mirror segment, as measured during regular wavefront sensing," said NASA.

Some of these degradations are correctable by adjusting the maths that NASA applies to the data that each panel collects, according to a commissioning paper published last week. However one strike - which occurred between 22 and 24 May - was caused by a larger micrometeoroid and resulted in "significant uncorrectable change" to segment C3 according to the document.

Fortunately, this change is not especially impactful on how the telescope as a whole functions - and NASA has said that its performance is continuing to exceed expectations - but it fundamentally reduces the accuracy of the data collected.

https://news.sky.com/story/meteoroid-hit-has-caused-significant-uncorrectable-damage-to-james-webb-space-telescope-12655489

[NoSheep]

1. 30 yrs to build. 10 billion dollars.

[xocetaceans]

7. The impact just proves the environment as it were out there is harsh. Can you do better? n/t

[NoSheep]

20. I wouldn't have spent the money on it in the first place. I think that would be better. n/t

[xocetaceans]

21. What would you have spent the money on? n/t

[Javaman]

17. Why exactly are you clapping? nt

[NickB79]

22. $333 million per year is a drop in the bucket for a government budget

It's easily worth the price for the scientific data it's sending back.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

2. Darn. It still had that "new space telescope" smell. NT

[2naSalit]

13. +1

[NNadir]

3. Bummer. I wonder if it was actually space debris.

[cos dem]

4. I assume you mean man-made debris? Probably not.

The orbit it is in is way out there. It's not really in Earth orbit, it's a Lagrange point, if you're familiar with that (L2 if you really care). Most debris we're dealing with is in low Earth orbit, which is only about 100 miles up. L2 is about 1.5 million km away from earth.

[rurallib]

6. If you mean man made stuff, I kind of doubt it

Since it is a million miles out, man hasn't sent a lot of stuff out that far. That they have sent that far has usually gone far beyond that.

As far as just 'space debris' I would imagine there is a huge amount of particles just hurtling willy-nilly throughout the universe from various destruction of stars, planets and meteors etc.

Pretty perilous out there.

[Chainfire]

5. We just think that it was a meteoroid....

Maybe somebody doesn't want us peeking at something.

[FBaggins]

8. Harder than you might think to accomplish

Lots of countries now have the ability to get something into orbit.

But getting something that far out that can actually sense/target Webb? Not nearly so easy. It's thousands of times as far away.

[Chainfire]

10. I was joking about extraterrestrials throwing rocks at our surveillance cameras. ;)

I figure if someone had figured out how to travel among the stars, that they would have had the ability to throw space rubble with some degree of accuracy.

I am very sorry to see the telescope partially disabled. Apparently the volume of information that it was gathering about the history of the Universe was astounding. (not to mention the pretty pictures)

[cstanleytech]

15. I would not throw out the chance it could be extraterrestrials just like one of us

could in theory win a 1 billion megamillion dollar lottery drawing on a Tuesday and then the next night win a billion dollar powerball drawing as well.

[sdfernando]

12. Perhaps the poster was referring to space aliens

as opposed to humans?

[mn9driver]

9. I always thought LaGrange points would tend to collect stray bits of interplanetary stuff.

It seems that is being demonstrated here. I hope Webb lasts long enough to get our money’s worth of data out of it.

[FBaggins]

11. That's true for L4/L5

Not so much for the other three. But even were that so, the relative velocity for objects being "collected" would be comparatively low (i.e., less damaging).

[lastlib]

14. Most of the stuff that hangs out there will tend to be low-velocity stuff....

Things with higher velocity would most likely just scoot on through. While that's the stuff that would do most damage to JWST, it's also the stuff with the lowest probability of hitting it.

[BWdem4life]

16. Wait, there's no force field?

I just assumed…

[Layzeebeaver]

18. The system was built to deal with this.

This nothing to worry about.

[LastLiberal in PalmSprings]

19. Is it still under warranty?

Take the damned thing back to the dealer and get an undamaged replacement.