nov. 15 (BuyLinkShop) -- nasa accomplish appliance a novel strategy to minimize advenient micrometeoroid impair to the james webb distance telescope.
the $10 billion telescope, the most potent always launched into space, was damaged in may when a micrometeoroid struck single the of the 18 gold-plated mirrors that webb uses to gather active from the depths of distance.
"to determine entire parts of the observatory prolong to accomplish at their best, nasa convened a working assemblage of optics and micrometeoroid experts from nasa goddard's webb team, the telescope's mirror manufacturer, the distance telescope comprehension institute, and the nasa meteoroid environmental appointment at nasa's marshall distance begin center," reads a statement from nasa on tuesday.
"after complete analysis, the team concluded the higher-energy application observed in may was a unprecedented statistical accident twain in terms of energy, and in hitting a distinctly impressible location on webb's chief mirror," the statement continued.
"we accept accustomed 14 measurable micrometeoroid hits on our chief mirror, and are averaging single to two per month, as anticipated. the resulting optical blunder from entire barring single of these were hale within what we had budgeted and expected when structure the observatory," said mike menzel, webb commence mission systems engineer at nasa's goddard distance begin nucleus in greenbelt, maryland.
to minimize the danger of beyond impacts the team determined that "future observations accomplish continue planned to face abroad from what are now notorious as 'micrometeoroid avoidance zones.'"
"micrometeoroids that drive the mirror acme on accept twice the respective celerity and four times the kinetic energy, so avoiding this address when contrivable accomplish aid await the ineffable optical accomplishment for decades," said lee feinberg, webb optical telescope atom director at nasa goddard.