The world's most powerful space telescope, James Webb Space Telescope, which promises to dive deeper into the universe, was bothered by a "dust-sized micrometeoroid" in May.
The micrometeoroid hit a primary mirror segment of the telescope between May 23 and May 25, the U.S. space agency NASA said on Wednesday.
NASA said the telescope was still "performing at a level that exceeds all mission requirements despite a marginally detectable effect in the data."
The mirror was "engineered to withstand bombardment from the micrometeoroid environment at its orbit around Sun-Earth L2 of dust-sized particles flying at extreme velocities," NASA continued.
"With Webb's mirrors exposed to space, we expected that occasional micrometeoroid impacts would gracefully degrade telescope performance over time," said NASA's Lee Feinberg.
Feinberg said the telescope sustained four smaller "measurable micrometeoroid strikes," but the late May one was "larger than our degradation predictions assumed."
The James Webb was launched into space on Dec. 25 aboard an Ariane launcher from the European spaceport Kourou in French Guiana, nearly two years later than originally planned.
Scientists hope the telescope's images will provide insights into the time after the Big Bang, about 13.8 billion years ago.
The James Webb took about 30 years to develop and cost about $10 billion. It follows the Hubble telescope, which has been in use for more than 30 years.
