Still, this doesn’t come as a total surprise.
However, NASA says that the models they used for these simulations didn’t have a micrometeoroid this large, and it was “beyond what the team could have tested on the ground.”
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The space agency also did a combination of simulations and ground testing with mirror samples to determine how to best strengthen the mirrors to withstand micrometeoroid impacts. In fact, NASA designed the telescope’s gold-coated mirrors to withstand strikes by tiny space debris over time. NASA expected JWST to get hit by tiny space particles during its lifetime fast-moving specks of space rock are just an inescapable feature of the deep space environment. NASA admits that the strike, which occurred between May 23rd and May 25th, caused a dimple in the mirror and a “marginally detectable effect in the data,” which engineers are continuing to analyze. 1 millimeter,” a NASA spokesperson told The Verge in an email.
The one that hit JWST in May, however, was larger than what the agency had prepared for, “likely less than.
A micrometeoroid is typically a small fragment of an asteroid, usually smaller than a grain of sand. Since its launch, JWST has already been hit by at least four different micrometeoroids, according to a NASA blog post, but all of those were small and about the size of what NASA expected the observatory to encounter. NASA expected JWST to get hit by tiny space particles