NASA’s new and most powerful space telescope, James Webb, was announced to be hit by a larger-than-expected micrometeoroid at the end of May, causing detectable damage to one of the telescope’s 18 main mirror segments. The mission team will need to correct the visual distortion caused by the impact, but NASA says the telescope is still performing at a level that exceeds all mission requirements.
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is the agency’s incredibly powerful next-generation space telescope designed to peer into the farthest reaches of the universe and look back in time to see stars and galaxies that formed just after the Big Bang. It took more than 20 years to build and cost NASA about $10 billion. It was launched into space at the beginning of 2021 and went through an extremely complex unfolding process before reaching its final destination, approximately 1.6 million kilometers from Earth.
Normally, engineers are able to avoid collisions by moving JWST’s mirrors and instruments if an impact from outer space is predicted. The problem here was that the micrometeoroid was not part of a rainstorm. NASA described the crash as “an unavoidable coincidence.” Because the JWST would be standing alone in space for many years, NASA engineers built the device extremely tough. Because it is so far away, it cannot undergo repairs like the Hubble Space Telescope in low Earth orbit.
The crash does not appear to affect the operation of the JWST. The telescope, which is currently in the process of final adjustments, is expected to send its first official images to Earth on July 12.
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