James webb telescope nasa how to#

To protect Webb in orbit, flight teams can use protective maneuvers that intentionally turn the optics away from known meteor showers before they are set to occur. These steps will be repeated when needed in response to future events as part of the monitoring and maintenance of the telescope throughout the mission. Engineers have already performed a first such adjustment for the recently affected segment C3, and additional planned mirror adjustments will continue to fine tune this correction. This minimizes the effect of any impact, although not all of the degradation can be cancelled out this way. By adjusting the position of the affected segment, engineers can cancel out a portion of the distortion. This and other performance margins make Webb’s science capabilities robust to potential degradations over time.įurthermore, Webb’s capability to sense and adjust mirror positions enables partial correction for the result of impacts. “We always knew that Webb would have to weather the space environment, which includes harsh ultraviolet light and charged particles from the Sun, cosmic rays from exotic sources in the galaxy, and occasional strikes by micrometeoroids within our solar system,” said Paul Geithner, technical deputy project manager at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “We designed and built Webb with performance margin – optical, thermal, electrical, mechanical – to ensure it can perform its ambitious science mission even after many years in space.” For example, due to careful work by the launch site teams, Webb’s optics were kept cleaner than required while on the ground their pristine cleanliness improves the overall reflectivity and throughput, thereby improving total sensitivity. This most recent impact was larger than was modeled, and beyond what the team could have tested on the ground.

James webb telescope nasa how to#

While the telescope was being built, engineers used a mixture of simulations and actual test impacts on mirror samples to get a clearer idea of how to fortify the observatory for operation in orbit. Webb’s mirror was engineered to withstand bombardment from the micrometeoroid environment at its orbit around Sun-Earth L2 of dust-sized particles flying at extreme velocities. After a successful launch, deployment, and telescope alignment, Webb’s beginning-of-life performance is still well above expectations, and the observatory is fully capable of performing the science it was designed to achieve. Impacts will continue to occur throughout the entirety of Webb’s lifetime in space such events were anticipated when building and testing the mirror on the ground. Thorough analysis and measurements are ongoing. After initial assessments, the team found the telescope is still performing at a level that exceeds all mission requirements despite a marginally detectable effect in the data. Between May 23 and 25, NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope sustained an impact to one of its primary mirror segments. Micrometeoroid strikes are an unavoidable aspect of operating any spacecraft, which routinely sustain many impacts over the course of long and productive science missions in space.