An asteroid strike that hit Nasa's impossibly expensive £8 billion James Webb Space Telescope may have caused 'more damage than previously thought, the space agency has revealed.
Back in May, the telescope was hit by an asteroid strike that caused six micrometeorites to strike the telescope's primary mirror.
Of these strikes, scientists think that at least five of them caused negligible damage to the telescope's body, with on in particular on May 22 causing the most trouble.
READ MORE: Nasa's amazing new £8 billion James Webb telescope has 'less memory than an iPhone 13'
Nasa's report states: "The single micrometeorite impact that occurred between 22 — 24 May 2022 UT exceeded prelaunch expectations of damage for a single micrometeoroid triggering further investigation and modelling by the JWST Project.
"The micrometeoroid which hit segment C3 in the period 22—24 May 2022 UT caused significant uncorrectable change in the overall figure of that segment.
"However, the effect was small at the full telescope level because only a small portion of the telescope area was affected."
Fortunately, the damage has not affected the telescope's ability to deliver awe-inspiring photos back to earth.
But what's even more impressive is the kit it uses to do so.
According to IEEE Spectrum, the pricey telescope only has 68GB of storage space, which is about the same memory size as Apple's cheapest iPhone (64GB).
This is roughly enough storage space to hang onto one day's worth of photographs, or in the case of an iPhone, a couple of apps and video files.
Nasa reportedly chose the small storage drive because of how difficult it is to take photographs in space.
The telescope is situated around a million miles away from Earth where it has to contend with deadly space radiation and very slow Internet speeds.
What's more, Nasa expects this storage space to shrink even further after 10 years due to wear and tear.
By comparison, a top-notch iPhone 13 Pro comes with 1TB of storage, or about 15 times the size of the telescope's hard drive.
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