Tiny meteoroid bops $10 billion Webb space telescope

This was the fifth and largest hit to the telescope since its December launch

A tiny meteoroid struck the newly deployed James Webb Space Telescope in May, knocking one of its gold-plated mirrors out of alignment but not changing the orbiting observatory's schedule to become fully operational shortly, NASA said on Wednesday.

The little space rock hit the $10 billion telescope sometime in late May and left a small but noticeable effect on the telescope's data, NASA said in a statement, adding that it was the fifth and largest hit to the telescope since its December launch.

"After initial assessments, the team found the telescope is still performing at a level that exceeds all mission requirements," NASA said. "Thorough analysis and measurements are ongoing."

Engineers have begun a delicate readjustment of the impacted mirror segment to help "cancel out a portion of the distortion" caused by the micrometeoroid, NASA said.

Webb parked itself in a solar orbit roughly a million miles (1.6 million km) from Earth in January and is expected to yield its first full-color images of the cosmos in July.

"This recent impact caused no change to Webb's operations schedule," NASA said.

Webb's mirror was engineered to withstand bombardment with dust-sized particles flying at extreme velocities in space, but the most recent impact was "larger than was modelled and beyond what the team could have tested on the ground," NASA said.