NASA $10 billion James Webb Space Telescope He experiences a cruel encounter with space danger: he is attacked by a small meteor.
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The attack of the micro-meteorite did not appear to have disturbed Webb’s vision too much, or made it impossible for him to make revolutionary observations of the universe, including capturing light emitted more than 13 billion years ago, just before the dawn of time. telescope Launched From French Guiana at Christmas, this tool is still calibrated and the results are great.
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But a direct hit in the mirror took NASA by surprise and is still being analyzed. NASA revealed details of the micro-meteorite attack in a blog post dedicated to the website.
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“Between May 23-25, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope experienced an impact on one part of the main mirror,” I mentioned the NASA Weblog. “After the initial assessment, the team found that the telescope was still operating at a rate that exceeded all mission requirements despite the marginal effects detected in the data.”
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NASA says the 18 mirror sections can be individually adjusted in response to a meteor impact like this.
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“By adjusting the position of the affected clip, engineers were able to cancel some of the distortion…though not all degradation can be reversed this way,” writes the NASA blog. “Engineers have made the first adjustments of the affected sector recently… Additional mirror adjustments planned to complement this correction will continue.”
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The exact size of the micrometeorite is unknown. It’s probably no bigger than a grain of sand, said Heidi Hamill, a planetary astronomer who has long been involved with the telescope.We will use it to study our solar system. Even a small thing can cause damage due to the speed with which it is carried outThe telescope revolves around the sun and periodically collides with random particles.
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This is a known danger, because even though it is secluded in space, it is not as empty as it seems.
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“There is absolutely no loss of knowledge from this event. … This telescope is in outer space – we knew there would be a small impact on it. We were surprised by one hit so quickly,” said Hamill.
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He said scientists expect such an effect on average every five years or so.
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This extraordinarily complex observatory, heralded as the long-awaited successor to the still functioning Hubble Space Telescope, orbits the sun in a position that makes it about a million miles from Earth. It’s too far away for astronauts to travel, and it’s not designed to be repaired or hardware swapped.
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Webb is going through a “commissioning” phase for several months as his instruments have been calibrated and 18 hexagonal gold-plated mirrors have been positioned to function as one large mirror about 21 feet in diameter.
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So far, NASA has reported nothing but success.
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“Astronomers are giddy seeing how well everything is going (but also worried about not being forgotten, yes we can be superstitious too) and excited to start doing science!” Astrophysicist Michael Turner of the University of Chicago said in an email.
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The telescope, folded in on itself when it launched last year, has been evolving for days Unlock the broad sun visor The mirror spreads. The telescope traveled 29 days to reach the forward location, an orbital location known as L2 where other telescopes work safely and provide scientists with data on the frequency of micrometeorites.
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When building the telescope, engineers used a combination of simulation and actual impact testing on mirror samples to get a clearer idea of how the observatory could be amplified to operate in orbit. This latter effect was larger than engineered, and beyond what the team could test on Earth,” wrote the NASA Webb blog.
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The Webb is different from most telescopes: It is wide open, and the mirror is naked rather than enclosed in a tube. The telescope is designed to observe the universe at infrared wavelengths that are beyond Hubble’s detection range.
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This requires a mirror and a very cool tool,This is why the mirror is farther away from the Earth and the Sun at all times. NASA has announced that the “First Light” images will be released on July 12, but has not said what these images will show.
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However, it actually produces an image of a star that is used to focus the mirror. In the background of the image are several galaxies whose light was emitted billions of years ago, and this impressed astronomers who predicted Webb would look deeper into space (and into the past) than Hubble, which launched in 1990.
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Webb had many goals, including studying the first light in the universe, which was emitted several hundred million years after the Big Bang. It will also look at the evolution of galaxies, studying objects in our solar system, including small icy bodies orbiting the Sun far from Neptune’s orbit.
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