At least one mirror portion of the James Webb Space Telescope suffered irreparable damage from a space micrometeorite impact, according to a paper published this week. The paper talks about the telescope’s performance during commissioning, when the James Webb Space Telescope was hit by about six micrometeorites in May.
Five of these impacts, which caused negligible losses, resulted in a root mean square (RMS) wavefront error of less than 1nm, the paper said. In other words, the researchers believe the distortion caused by the first five impacts can be corrected and removed from the final output. However, a sixth impact in mid-May caused more serious damage to the telescope .
A single micrometeorite impact between May 22 and 24, 2022 exceeded pre-launch expectations for damage to a single micrometeorite, prompting further investigation and modeling by the JWST project.
The James Webb Space Telescope has 18 hexagonal sections that can be individually and finely adjusted, marked as The mirrored portion of C3 suffered the most damage in the micrometeorite impact. Since each mirror segment is adjustable, the researchers have minimized the effect, but the error cannot be fully compensated.
After two subsequent recalibration steps, the telescope was calibrated to a minimum of 59nm RMS, the report said. But due to the impact, the total wavefront error of the entire James Webb telescope has increased by about 5-10nm . This is of course higher than ideal conditions, but still within acceptable parameters.
media coverage
CNBeta IT Home TechWeb Product Play
Related events
- The James Webb Space Telescope was hit by six micrometeorites, and there has been an irreversible error2022-07-17
- Webb Space Telescope captures the first full-color image released2022-07-11
- The James Webb Space Telescope is continuing to cool2022-02-11
- The 1.6 million-kilometer Webb Space Telescope reaches its final orbit in 1 month2022-01-25
- NASA begins months-long effort to complete calibration of Webb telescope2022-01-13
This article is reprinted from: https://readhub.cn/topic/8hIpipe7jRd
This site is for inclusion only, and the copyright belongs to the original author.