NASA’s James Webb telescope gets hit by a micrometeroid

NASA and its partners had engineered James Webb Telescope to be able to withstand harsh situations, such as being bombarded by micrometeroids flying at extremely high velocities.

Between May 23rd and May 25th, a micrometeoroid that's larger than expected hit one of the telescope's primary mirror segments.

The event was significant enough for NASA to pick up a "marginally detectable effect in the data,"

Fortunately that was not enough to affect the telescope's performance

NASA announced that James Webb team performed an initial analysis and found that it still performs at a level that "exceeds all mission requirements."

The good news is that James Webb has the capability to adjust mirror positions in order to correct and minimize the results of impacts like this.

Its engineers have already made the first of several adjustments to make up for the damage on the affected segment.

The agency has also formed a team of engineers to look into ways to mitigate effects of hits this scale in the future.

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