Meteor causes 'unrepairable' dent in James Webb glasses

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope launched on December 25, 2021. To date, the glass has collided with at least 19 small meteors - including a fairly large one that left visible damage on one of the glass's 18 gilded mirrors, reports arXiv.org database on 12/7.

A large micrometeorite crashed into the James Webb space telescope's C3 mirror, leaving permanent damage (bright white spot in the lower-right mirror fragment). (Photo: NASA/CSA/ESA)

In the report, NASA experts shared the first images showing the extent of the damage. On the C3 mirror piece in the lower right corner, the impact site appears as a prominent bright white indentation in the center of the gilded mirror.

The collision most likely occurred between May 23 and May 25, leaving "irreparable" damage to a small part of the mirror, the team of experts said. However, this small dent does not seem to prevent James Webb from working. In fact, the performance of this telescope is still exceeding expectations.

Micrometeoroids or micrometeoroids are a familiar threat to spacecraft in near-Earth orbit. The US Space Monitoring Network tracks more than 23,000 objects in orbit larger than a softball, but there are millions of smaller objects that are nearly impossible to track.

As a result, NASA and other space agencies prepare in advance for the inevitable collisions. "Any spacecraft will have to face micrometeorites," the team said on arXiv.org.

To date, six micrometeorites have left conspicuous distortions on the James Webb mirrors, equivalent to one major collision per month since launch. This number is still within expectations. When developing James Webb, engineers actively used objects the size of micrometeorites to hit the mirror prototype to test how the collision affected the telescope's performance.

What was unexpected, however, was the size of the meteorite that dented the C3 mirror. This meteorite appears to be larger than experts expected. Currently, they are trying to assess the impact that similar collisions could have on James Webb in the future.

Despite the sudden collision with the C3 mirror, the researchers found that James Webb was still performing well after 6 months of testing and had a promising future. "James Webb was developed to bring about breakthroughs in the human understanding of the formation and evolution of galaxies, stars and planetary systems. Now we know for sure that it will." , they commented.