Even as the James Webb Space Telescope is allowing astronomers to see inside vast, distant galaxies, it’s also studying some tiny, nearby objects \u2014 albeit inadvertently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These are micrometeoroids, tiny mysteries zipping through the solar system<\/u><\/a> at lightning speed. They’re far too small for scientists to observe directly in deep space, but they shouldn’t be ignored: Micrometeoroids can pack quite a punch, as NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope<\/u><\/a> (JWST or Webb) can attest. Since JWST’s Christmas 2021 launch, engineers have detected more than 20 micrometeoroid impacts to the telescope; only one noticeably hurt the observatory. The mission is adjusting its operations to reduce the frequency of micrometeoroid hits, but still, the impacts themselves are perhaps the least expected data from the powerhouse new observatory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00abIt is essentially a meteoroid flux detector, although not intentionally,\u00bb Margaret Campbell-Brown, a meteor physicist at the University of Western Ontario in Canada, told Space.com. \u00abAlthough, of course, we’re sad for them when their mirror gets hit by meteoroids.\u00bb<\/p>\n\n\n\n