NASA has reported that a meteoroid hit on the James Webb Space Telescope has caused “significant uncorrectable” damage to one of the panels it uses to stare into deep space.
The orbiting observatory was launched last December and recently released a full set of new observations, including what is said to be the “deepest” and most detailed picture of the cosmos to date.
Like any spacecraft, it has encountered micrometeoroids and its sensors have detected six deformations on the telescope’s primary mirror panels that have been attributed to strikes.
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“Each micrometeoroid caused degradation in the wavefront of the impacted mirror segment, as measured during regular wavefront sensing,” said NASA.
Read more: Sky News