The Germans put the instrument into safe mode back in February, after it had completed only half of the full-sky surveys planned for it, in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This is according to their bombastic space chief, Dmitry Rogozin, who said that he has issued instructions to Roscosmos to reactivate the German eROSITA X-ray telescope aboard the Russia-built and awesomely named Spektr-RG spacecraft. While it certainly won’t be the last time this happens, it would have been nice to see one picture from Webb before it started accumulating hits.Īlso in space telescope news, Russia is apparently trying to hack a shut-down telescope back into operation.
The rogue space rock apparently did enough damage to be noticeable in the data coming back from the telescope and to require adjustment to the position of the mirror segment. It was also not part of any known meteoroid storm in the telescope’s orbit if it had been, controllers would have been able to maneuver the spacecraft to protect the gold-plated beryllium segments. While far from unexpected, the strike on mirror segment C3 (the sixth mirror from the top going clockwise, roughly in the “south southeast” position) that occurred back in late May was larger than any of the simulations or test strikes performed on Earth prior to launch. “Don’t worry, that’ll buff right out.” Alarming news this week as the James Webb Space Telescope team announced that a meteoroid had hit the space observatory’s massive primary mirror.