Micrometeoroid Noticeably Damaged One of Webb Telescope's Mirror Segments

"A small space rock has proven to have a big effect on NASA's newly operational deep-space telescope," reports Space.com, causing "significant uncorrectable change" according to a new report from NASA engineers. But fortunately, "Seventeen mirror segments remain unblemished and engineers were able to realign Webb's segments to account for most of the damage."



A micrometeoroid struck the James Webb Space Telescope between May 22 and 24, impacting one of the observatory's 18 hexagonal golden mirrors. NASA had disclosed the micrometeoroid strike in June and noted that the debris was more sizeable than pre-launch modeling had accounted for. Now, scientists on the mission have shared an image that drives home the severity of the blow in a report released July 12 describing what scientists on the mission learned about using the observatory during its first six months in space.

Happily, in this case the overall effect on Webb was small....
Based on fuel usage, the telescope should last 20 years in space. But scientists aren't sure how much of an effect micrometeroid strikes will have upon its operations, the report authors stated. Micrometeroids are a known danger of space operations, and facing them is by no means new to scientists; the International Space Station and the Hubble Space Telescope are among long-running programs that are still operational despite occasional space rock strikes. However, Webb's orbit at Lagrange Point 2 about 1 million miles (1.5 million kilometers) away from the Earth may change the risk profile considerably....

In this case, however, the overall impact to the mission is small "because only a small portion of the telescope area was affected...." Engineers are still modeling how frequently such events will occur....
One remedy could be minimizing the amount of time Webb points directly into its orbital direction, "which statistically has higher micrometeoroid rates and energies," the team wrote.

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