(ORDO NEWS) — When designing the telescope, the engineers tried to take into account all the dangers that Webb may face in space.
These are both constant factors, such as temperature and solar radiation, and random ones – a collision with a small object.
This is exactly what happened when a fragment of a meteorite crashed into the mirror element of the telescope.
“We designed and built Webb with enough headroom to last for many years of space missions,” said one of NASA‘s top engineers.
This is not the first time the telescope has encountered meteorites. As a rule, these are fragments of larger celestial bodies, whose trajectory cannot be calculated in advance. Four cases have already been recorded, this is the fifth.
Although the size of the fragment is larger than intended by the developers, Webb was not damaged and continues to carry out his mission to explore space.
Certain errors in the data obtained were made at the development stage, and the mirrors have sensors that allow you to track their position and, if necessary, correct it.
The first photographs taken by the Webb Telescope should arrive on Earth by mid-July, and they will help determine how safe the cosmic collision was.
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