22/07/2022
On June 8th, NASA revealed that its new powerful space observatory, the James Webb Space Telescope, is now sporting a small dimple in one of its primary mirrors after getting pelted by a larger-than-expected micrometeoroid out in deep space. The news came as a bit of a shock since the impact happened just five months into the telescope’s space tenure — but such strikes are simply an inevitable aspect of space travel, and more thwacks are certainly on their way.
Despite what its name implies, space isn’t exactly empty. Within our Solar System, tiny bits of space dust are zooming through the regions between our planets at whopping speeds that can reach up to tens of thousands of miles per hour. These micrometeoroids, no larger than a grain of sand, are often little pieces of asteroids or comets that have broken away and are now orbiting around the Sun. And they’re everywhere. A rough estimate of small meteoroids in the inner Solar System puts their combined total mass at about 55 trillion tons (if they were all combined into one rock, it’d be about the size of a small island).
NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope got thwacked, and it’ll probably get thwacked again.