Off Topic > General Discussion
James Webb Space Telescope
molesworth:
Looks like one of the meteoroid impacts has done some serious damage to a mirror segment :
https://www.livescience.com/james-webb-space-telescope-micrometeoroid-picture
https://www.space.com/james-webb-space-telescope-micrometeoroid-damage
From the reports it sounds like it'll only have a minor effect on the quality of the images and other data, but the worry is that there seems to have been quite a few hits since deployment, and there's no way to predict the likely frequency of further impacts. Fingers crossed this one was a one-in-a-billion unlucky early hit.
Count Zero:
Who could have guessed that an abnormal amount of space debris would collect (instead of drifting away and scattering) at the place we selected because objects orbiting there tend to stay there?
Larry Niven predicted this in his 1967 short story "Flatlander". Beowulf Schaeffer describes an early deep space ship passing through a Lagrange point and taking "unexpected" micrometeor damage.
Grashtel:
--- Quote from: Count Zero on July 21, 2022, 02:27:28 AM ---Who could have guessed that an abnormal amount of space debris would collect (instead of drifting away and scattering) at the place we selected because objects orbiting there tend to stay there?
Larry Niven predicted this in his 1967 short story "Flatlander". Beowulf Schaeffer describes an early deep space ship passing through a Lagrange point and taking "unexpected" micrometeor damage.
--- End quote ---
The Webb is at L2, its not one of the stable points, anything there will drift away from it without active stabilisation, its useful as its stable relative to Earth and a lot further away than a normal orbit would be stable at
cjameshuff:
--- Quote from: Grashtel on July 21, 2022, 11:25:00 PM ---
--- Quote from: Count Zero on July 21, 2022, 02:27:28 AM ---Who could have guessed that an abnormal amount of space debris would collect (instead of drifting away and scattering) at the place we selected because objects orbiting there tend to stay there?
Larry Niven predicted this in his 1967 short story "Flatlander". Beowulf Schaeffer describes an early deep space ship passing through a Lagrange point and taking "unexpected" micrometeor damage.
--- End quote ---
The Webb is at L2, its not one of the stable points, anything there will drift away from it without active stabilisation, its useful as its stable relative to Earth and a lot further away than a normal orbit would be stable at
--- End quote ---
Right, it's L4 and L5 that tend to collect things, objects tend to just pass through L1, L2, and L3...their importance is that there are low-energy trajectories to and through them. JWST's lifetime is set by propellant required to maintain its orbit, it will wander off into solar orbit when that is exhausted. There may be an elevated amount of debris passing through that area of space, but it's not really clear how elevated, or what the velocity and size distributions are. Another reason it might have been a good idea to send some lower-cost precursor missions...
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