According to a newly published paper, a team of scientists said that after describing James Webb’s performance during its launch phase, the telescope reported problems that “cannot be fixed.” They added that the telescope also suffered “a small effect, which is not yet measurable.” “At present, the biggest source of uncertainty is the long-term effects of micrometeoroids that slowly degrade the primary mirror,” the scientists say in the report. On May 22, the primary mirror of the James Webb Space Telescope was struck by six micrometeorites. Of these, the sixth hit dealt significant damage. At first it wasn’t thought to be too big, but now the scientists’ new paper suggests it could be more serious than we thought. The impact “exceeded pre-launch damage expectations for a single micrometeoroid triggering further research and modeling,” the report further stated. Also read | Explained: How James Webb Telescope images are changing our understanding of the universe Although the damage did not compromise the resolution of the space telescope’s primary mirror, the engineers who designed Webb believe the mirrors and sun shield will inevitably be slowly degraded by micrometeoroid impacts, the paper said. A possible solution could be to minimize the time spent looking in the direction of orbital motion that statistically has higher rates and energies of micrometeoroids, the paper further stated. In June, after the asteroid strike, Nasa issued a statement saying Webb’s mirror was “designed to withstand bombardment from the micrometeoroid environment in its Sun-Earth orbit of L2 dust-sized particles flying at extreme speeds.” . “As the telescope was being built, engineers used a mixture of simulations and real test impacts on mirror samples to get a clearer idea of ​​how to fortify the observatory for on-orbit operation. This latest impact was larger than planned and beyond what the team could have tested on the ground,” Nasa said. The James Webb Space Telescope was built by Nasa in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) at a cost of $10 billion. One of the largest mirrors on a space telescope, Webb launched on December 25, 2021, and since February has been orbiting the L2 point — nearly a million miles, or 1.6 million kilometers, from Earth.