[imagesource: NASA / Adriana Manrique Gutierrez]

It turns out that all those lovely golden mirrors on the miraculous James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) are quite vulnerable to being damaged by space rocks.

Thank goodness it managed to send some incredible images out before being knocked by this space curveball.

The $10 billion space telescope has been traversing the great skies around 1,6 million kilometres from Earth, where, unfortunately, micrometeoroid strikes are a common occurrence.

The Webb scientists knew this and had banked on a few space pebbles hitting their precious, but it seems one particular impact was a little worse than had been predicted.

The JWST has 18 hexagonal beryllium-gold segments that make up the primary 6,5-metre mirror, one of which is called C3. That segment was struck by small dust particles between May 23 and 25 this year, according to Forbes.

Micrometeoroids are bits of rock flying through space, able to reach speeds of up to 35 400 kilometres per hour – which despite being tiny are major hazards for astronauts, satellites, and spacecraft.

You can’t be so big and shiny in the open like that and not get a little hurt, right?

Image: NASA/Chris Gunn

A report outlining the performance of the space telescope during its commissioning phase suggests that the damage to the C3 segment could be more serious than first thought, reports Gizmodo:

“Of the six micrometeoroid strikes detected thus far through wavefront sensing, five had negligible effects,” reads the report…

“By contrast, the micrometeoroid which hit segment C3 in the period 22—24 May 2022 UT caused significant uncorrectable change in the overall figure of that segment.”

Moreover, the report said that this event “exceeded prelaunch expectations of damage for a single micrometeoroid, triggering further investigation and modeling by the JWST Project.”

The report is concerned about what this means for Webb’s longevity, with the “largest source of uncertainty” being the “long-term effects of micrometeoroid impacts that slowly degrade the primary mirror”.

The good news is that the telescope is still working well enough, according to Thomas Zurbuchen, the Associate Administrator at NASA’s Science Mission Directorate:

Micrometeoroid strikes are an unavoidable aspect of operating in space. Recently, @NASAWebb sustained an impact to one primary mirror segment. After initial assessments, the team found the telescope is still performing at a level that exceeds all mission requirements. https://t.co/2qHwr8QVbh

— Thomas Zurbuchen (@Dr_ThomasZ) June 8, 2022

The C3 impact might have been a once-off but scientists still need to consider ways to avoid these kinds of strikes going forward:

A possible solution could be to minimize time spent looking in the direction of orbital motion, which statistically has higher micrometeoroid rates and energies, said the report.

But what if that is the direction where all the habitable planets are plodding along?

Since that is one of the goals of the JWST, it would be so much better if it could keep its mirror eyes on all segments of the universe.

Ah well, you win some, you lose some.

[sources:forbes&gizmodo]