In light of the new James Webb telescope being hit by a micrometeoroid causing damage to the mirrors, how do most space satellites avoid complete destruction from random bits of rock or debris floating in space? Shouldn’t probes like voyager be already completely destroyed by random collisions?
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there’s thousands of small and not-so-small particles surrounding our planet.
everything that is above a certain size (I thinkabout half a fist in size or about 5cm diameter) is actually being tracked from the ground here by NASA (and I assume ESA and the other space agencies).
which is crazy, considering thats tens of thousands of pieces of rock/metal/etc that move around our planet at several times the speed of a bullet you fire from a gun.
those particles the satellites actually avoid by changing their course, if they get too close to their trajectory.
smaller particles can and will impact your satellite sooner or later. and they can cause quite some damage. I have seen small (0,5cm diameter) alu “bullets” create craters about 10 times their size when they impacted solid iron blocks. *
fortunately for us, space is kinda large. like really really big. those thousands and tens of thousands of particles? they move around in a space consisting of millions of square KILOMETERS (or square miles if you want).
so the chance that one will hit you is more like once every couple of years.
however it gets more and more filled with trash up there and we’ve both made efforts to protect satellites from these impacts and are looking into ways to remove trash. (eventually it falls towards earth and burns up in the atmosphere but that takes too long for how fast we’re adding new trash)
* I worked at a research institute where they replicated these impacts that occur in space in order to find better shielding options for actual satellites / space stations / etc
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