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Webb Space Telescope was damaged after being hit by a space rock

Damage to the James Webb Telescope’s primary mirror from a micrometeorite strike in May is worse than first thought.

A paper published Tuesday on the academic preprint server arxiv.org detailing Webb’s performance during the commissioning of the telescope revealed that most of the micrometeorite strikes on Webb’s big mirror resulted in negligible damage, but a strike that occurred in mid-May even left the telescope with permanent damage.