Asteroid hit permanently damaged NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope
The James Webb Space Telescope is a space telescope designed to conduct infrared astronomy. It was launched on 25 December 2021 and cost around 1,000 crores USD. However, to everyone’s surprise, scientists have announced that the device suffered permanent damage because of a series of asteroid attacks in May.
James Webb Space Telescope Damage
In a paper titled ‘Characterization of JWST science performance from commissioning,‘ scientists said that the telescope reported problems that “cannot be corrected”. The telescope also suffered a “small effect throughout, which is not yet measurable”, they added.
The James Webb Space Telescope’s primary mirror was hit by six micrometeorites in May 2022, the last of which caused significant damage. In the beginning, scientists didn’t consider it too big, but now the new paper by scientists suggests it could be more serious than thought.
The report states that” The impact exceeded prelaunch expectations of damage for a single micrometeoroid triggering further investigation and modelling. At present, the largest source of uncertainty is the long-term effects of micrometeoroid impacts that slowly degrade the primary mirror,”
It added” While the telescope was being built, engineers used a mixture of simulations and actual test impacts on mirror samples to get a clearer idea of how to fortify the observatory for operation in orbit. This most recent impact was larger than was modelled, and beyond what the team could have tested on the ground. The mirrors and sunshield are expected to slowly degrade from micrometeoroid impacts; the detectors are expected to experience cumulative slow damage from charged particles; the sunshield and multilayer insulation will degrade from space weathering.”
Can the Webb telescope be repaired?
As per NASA, the James Webb Space Telescope will not be serviceable but it has been designed to be reliable without regular servicing.
The James Webb Space Telescope comprises one of the largest mirrors on a space telescope. Liked this post? Don’t forget to check out our other short stories in our Quick Read section