NASA delivers first JWST image

One can't escape the gravitational lensing in this ultra far-field image, and there is a lot of data to be unpacked and analyzed for the many forthcoming scientific papers.

Discovery - hot off of the proverbial grill

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Been looking at the first few images, just amazing. Love the side by side comparison with previous Hubble images.
Yeah - it crushed Hubble on its first try, and it's not even working at max chat yet.

Shame about that particle impact... that mirror might be out of the game permanently😥
 
Yeah - it crushed Hubble on its first try, and it's not even working at max chat yet.

Shame about that particle impact... that mirror might be out of the game permanently😥

Yes, and the engineering team designed performance margin into its opto-mechanical, thermal, and electrical components long before technicians were at the obtaining beryllium stage. So far, there have been four micrometeoroid impacts that I am aware of that were all within the design specifications of the JWST and the telescope's optical performance continues to exceed expectations.

Space is an unforgiving environment.

- Cosmic charged particles ( our host star, and galactic in origin )
- Ultraviolet radiation
- micrometeoroids
- temperature extremes

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Yes, and the engineering team designed performance margin into its opto-mechanical, thermal, and electrical components long before technicians were at the obtaining beryllium stage. So far, there have been four micrometeoroid impacts that I am aware of that were all within the design specifications of the JWST and the telescope's optical performance continues to exceed expectations.

Space is an unforgiving environment.

- Cosmic charged particles ( our host star, and galactic in origin )
- Ultraviolet radiation
- micrometeoroids
- temperature extremes

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Any room in there for x-ray and gamma rays which are extinguished by the earth's atmosphere.
 
NASA revealed a micrometeoroid caused "significant uncorrectable damage" to JWST's mirror segment known as C3, one of the 18 beryllium-gold tiles that make up the telescope's 6.5-meter wide primary reflector, in late May. article
 
Any room in there for x-ray and gamma rays which are extinguished by the earth's atmosphere.

I would be surprised if they did nothing. At a minimum the models should have provided an uncertainty analysis with a back-up plan.

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I would be surprised if they did nothing. At a minimum the models should have provided an uncertainty analysis with a back-up plan.

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With the amazing engineering that went into its success, I would be surprised too. Of course putting all those other satellites including Gaia which also had a Lagrangian L2 orbit helped.
 
That is a real bummer. The Webb has already brought back beautiful images. I hope at some point that it can be repaired.
Sadly, it can never be repaired. It is four times the distance of the moon and any self healing fixtures would have to have been pre-engineered into the system. Luckily it is designed to take this kind of hit and still keep going.
 
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