While I’m not sure the invitation would extend to Jeremy Clarkson right now, muppet of the moment last seen driving around Argentina in a Porsche number-plated H982 FLK (what the flk was he thinking?), as soon as we stepped over the threshold we felt right at home. «Come Visit Argentina»/»Visite Argentina» is the work of Jorge Costa and Julia Muzio «on a mission to tell the rest of the world about the amazingness of the glorious and exotic Republic of Argentina, with its gauchos, steak and tango» (CASA programme). «No really» I insist «Trust me, you’ll love it.» And then I cross my fingers and bribe them with an ice-cream in the foyer of RichMix in Shoreditch. «So, what are we going to do again this afternoon Mum?» The kids faces fall, their father’s already resigned, as I explain to them we are off to watch a couple of Argentine clowns talk about their country. Chapter 41: CASA Festival – Clowning around in «Come Visit Argentina» Stay Tuned.21 octubre, 2014 en Novedades / Visite Argentina (actualizado hace 1652 dias) Those images are being taken now, and should be just amazing. Hopefully, for some time to come, any more will be smaller and less damaging.Īnd this won’t deter the release of the first science images, which is planned for July 12, just a month from now. This one was bigger than you might expect so early on, but that doesn’t mean there’s an elevated risk from bigger rocks sometimes a coin just randomly lands tails-up a few times in a row. Impacts happen, and there will be many more on JWST. Those are predictable, though, and the observatory can be turned to minimize the effects - Hubble has done this many times, in fact. Sometimes they come in swarms, like during a meteor shower. This micrometeoroid was what we call a sporadic, or random one. The James Webb Space Telescope’s primary mirror is composed of 18 smaller (1.3 meter) mirrors, which will unfold when the observatory reaches space. If I had to guess I’d think it was still pretty small, perhaps less than a millimeter in size, but to be clear that’s pure speculation. Still, this impact was bigger than expected, though NASA didn’t say how big they think the impactor was. Since launch there have been four impacts on the observatory, which is about what you’d expect given its size, the environment - JWST is at the gravitationally stable Earth-Sun L2 point, about 1.5 million kilometers from Earth - and how long JWST has been in space. On the ground, long before launch, engineers used simulations to see what impacts could do, and actually used test impacts on samples of the mirrors to see what damage would occur. However, the mirrors have to be exposed to space and so are vulnerable to impacts. The sunshield, a tennis-court-sized structure comprised of five layers of thin Kapton that protects JWST from the heat of the Sun, can withstand small holes and even tears. A lot of the important electronics on the observatory’s underside are armored against impacts, for example. Much of JWST is designed to withstand small impacts (scroll to the bottom of that page to get some details). However, engineers know these things are out there and plan accordingly. Hubble’s 2nd-generation solar panels were replaced in 2002, and after more than eight years in space had suffered many micrometeoroid impacts. At those speeds even a rock barely big enough to see packs quite a wallop, and can damage spacecraft. These bits orbit the Sun on their own, and while small they’re moving at orbital velocities, which can be many dozens of kilometers per second. These are essentially shrapnel blasted off asteroids when they collide with one another, or teeny bits of cometary rock naturally shed as comets warm up near the Sun, their ice turns to gas, and embedded material comes loose. Space isn’t empty, and near Earth there are a lot of small bits of debris flying around, most of which are far smaller than a grain of sand. The telescope sustained a small bit of damage to one mirror segment, but engineers say it’s fine and the observatory is still well above its mission performance requirements.
Don’t panic! But sometime between May 23 and 25, 2022, the James Webb Space Telescope was hit by a micrometeoroid, a tiny piece of rock that came off a comet or asteroid.
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