OUR NASA announced this Wednesday, June 8, that one of the mirrors James Webb Space Telescope got hit by some micrometeorites. The most recent – and serious – collision took place between 23 and 25 May. Luckily, telescope continues to work very well and you will have no problem capturing images.

“Catch yourself in the eye, boy!”

micrometeorites the smallest meteors what you can imagine. They are the size of a grain of sand and go much faster than a formula car. MUCH FASTER. If falling into the sand already leaves you scratched, imagine that a small grain falls on you at a speed of a thousand kilometers per hour. Luckily, JWST it is made to withstand those impacts for a long time. But collision with micrometeorites will reduce their performance over the years – and this is to be expected.

OUR NASA showed that the five impacts suffered so far have not reduced the operational capability James Webb (remember: it cost $10 billion). O micrometeorite which caused the strongest impact, affected the C3 segment (see below) of the primary mirror, and “pierced” the team’s predictions about instrument degradation time. Still, it’s support. JWST will continue to do so for many years to come. It is designed with a high performance margin to ensure a long mission.

James Webb: years from production to release

project James Webb telescope was developed National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in collaboration with European and Canadian space agencies. It was originally supposed to be launched in 2007. But some problems delayed the launch of the model, one of them was the high cost of production of the James Webb telescope, which was increasingly increasing and back in 2005 made Engineers rethink the original design.

In 2016, the telescope was declared ready, but its project was again put on hold due to construction difficulties and remained so until 2019, when it was finally assembled. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, there have been more delays until NASA finally set to release on December 18, 2021.

With it, researchers will be able to observe even more things from space, being able to see some of the oldest galaxies in the universe and other celestial bodies such as black holes.

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Source: Cosmos