快猫短视频

快猫短视频s may have to avoid pointing the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) in certain directions too often for fear of damage from space rocks.

During the six-month period of instrument testing called commissioning, JWST was struck by at least six micrometeoroids, pieces of space dust that orbit the sun. This wasn鈥檛 unexpected 鈥� space is full of these tiny rocks, and the team predicted one collision per month 鈥� but one that struck a segment of the telescope鈥檚 mirror in May was larger than anything anyone expected or predicted before its launch.

According to a report on JWST commissioning released on 12 July, that strike 鈥渃aused significant uncorrectable change in the overall figure of that segment鈥� However, the effect was small at the full telescope level because only a small portion of the telescope area was affected.鈥� Thanks to the extraordinarily precise control mechanism necessary to align the 18 segments of the telescope鈥檚 mirror, engineers were able to tweak their positions to mostly mitigate the effects of the micrometeoroid strike.

Nevertheless, too many of these strikes could seriously degrade the segments. The JWST team is now working on new models to figure out how common events like this should be, and how to deal with any damage they might cause. That might even mean avoiding pointing the telescope in the direction in which it is travelling to stave off head-on collisions.

This is unlikely to preclude any particular targets for observation, says JWST team member at NASA鈥檚 Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. 鈥淚t depends on what we determine, but I don鈥檛 foresee us reducing the Field of Regard,鈥� he says, referring to the area in the sky viewed by the telescope. 鈥淎 possibility we will study is [minimising] pointing in particular directions, [which] could impact scheduling.鈥�

We can鈥檛 tell for sure how it could impact what science happens when until the studies are done, he says.

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