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ScottS

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Posts posted by ScottS

  1. Not really PGA Tour related, but someone at the USGA is clearly a big Seinfeld fan.

    Seinfeld group highlights notable US Amateur stroke play groupings

    Quote

    Newman!

    The USGA has a history of creative groupings, and the upcoming U.S. Amateur, which begins Monday at Ridgewood Country Club, is not different. The best example: the stroke-play threesome of Mark Costanza from Morristown, New Jersey, Hazen Newman of Las Vegas, and Campbell Kremer of Louisville, Kentucky.

    Get it? “Seinfeld” main characters George Costanza and Cosmo Kramer, and antagonist Newman.

    Costanza is the most notable player of the bunch. The 33-year-old investment banker, who was born near Ridgewood, is a two-time Met Golf Association player of the year and was runner-up to Stewart Hagestad at last year’s U.S. Mid-Amateur.

    Newman is a rising senior at Oklahoma State and Kremer a rising junior at Kentucky. Kremer attended the same high school (St. Xavier in Louisville) as Justin Thomas.

    Other notable groupings include:

    • World beaters:  Ludvig Aberg (2 in WAGR), Gordon Sargent (4) and Michael Thorbjornsen (6)

    • The Tall Guys: Wenyi Ding (6’4), Stewart Hagestad (6’5) and Davis Womble (6’6).

    • 2022 U.S. Open weekenders: Travis Vick (low am), Austin Greaser and Sam Bennett

    • Summer winners: David Ford (Southern Am), Luke Clanton (North and South Am) and William Mouw (Trans-Miss Am)

    • Elite Amateur Golf Series top 3: Caleb Surratt (1), Jiri Zuska (2) and Bryce Lewis (3)

    Click here for complete tee times and groupings.

    Rooting for Travis Vick to win or at least make a deep run like last year in the Amateur.

  2. 12 minutes ago, Schulz2.0 said:

    Looks like south Texas is going to get soaked.

    As a resident of the coastal bend I can confirm that soakage is currently happening.  And it is badly needed.

    • Hook 'Em 3
    • Like 1
  3. Rebel Toad is good.  There is also Nueces Brewing.  Food in addition to beer.

    Lorelei is a small place with not much indoor seating so you may have to sit outside if it is crowded.  But I like their brews.

    I personally think Lazy Beach is not worth the trip but if for some reason you are on the south side, well, it is there.  They have hard kombucha if that is your thing.

  4. 3 hours ago, Your Mom said:

    People do that?

    You ever try to get blood and brain splatter refrigerant or other fluids one would use in the HVAC business off an uncoated garage floor?  It is much easier to clean up a coated floor.  Hypothetically speaking, of course.

    • Like 1
  5. For those of us who used to watch the ESPN NFL pre-game show back in the day, Hank Goldberg passed away.  Made it to 82.  No word on if that beat the over/under.

    https://www.espn.com/espn/story/_/id/34193642/espn-nfl-reporter-handicapping-expert-hank-goldberg-dies-82

    Quote

    Hank Goldberg, who worked at ESPN as an NFL reporter and handicapping expert for two decades, died Monday on his 82nd birthday, his family confirmed.

    Goldberg had been in treatment for chronic kidney disease in recent years.

    Known as Hammering Hank, Goldberg was .500 or better in 15 of 17 NFL seasons while predicting games at ESPN. He made appearances on NFL Countdown and ESPN Radio and contributed to the network's thoroughbred racing coverage.

    Goldberg had also been a contributor on ESPN's Daily Wager throughout the sports betting show's existence, doing weekly hits during the NFL season and occasional appearances around the Triple Crown races. His last appearance on ESPN was in May, when he did a phone interview from the Kentucky Derby.

    Goldberg was also a longtime fixture in Miami, serving as a local radio and TV host for more than 25 years and working as a Dolphins radio analyst. He began his career in the 1970s as an assistant to handicapper Jimmy "The Greek" Snyder.

     

    • Hook 'Em 2
    • Like 4
  6. 1 hour ago, CooterBrown said:

    Went to the Louvre a few weeks ago. I’d always heard the jokes about the Mona Lisa being postage stamp sized. It’s actually the size I’d expect a portrait to be, almost 3’x2’. Every other damn painting in that place is at least 10’ tall and 6’ wide. Dozens are the size of a living room. I wonder what the logistics were for painting a canvas that size.

    I am assuming that things have not changed from when I visited the Louvre several years ago and to see the Mona Lisa one had to make his or her way through a mob of Asian tourists.

    Also, wasn't it just a few weeks ago that someone rolled up to the Mona Lisa in a wheelchair and smeared cake all over the glass shield protecting the painting?  I am not accusing anyone of anything, but the timing of your visit make me suspicious...

    • Like 1
    • Haha 2
  7. 1 hour ago, Valmy77 said:

    FSU is in ND's conference but that wouldn't surprise me.

    I don't think anybody's destination job in College Baseball is in the north where you get to start your season in ice and snow.

    Plus there is the fact that Notre Dame's head coach is a Florida State alum.

  8. Just now, wood said:

    You too? Was it in the 80s, while you were at UT? If soo, we might've worked together. Some dude named Jamie recruited us. I'm turrible at sales, but I still have a 35 yo set of Cutco from back then that's been absolutely unbelievably good. Cutco is the real deal /csb.

    No, I was at UT in the mid 90s.  That was my main takeaway from that job:  sales are not in my future.  My knives are still going strong after about 25 years, though.

    • Hook 'Em 1
  9. 11 minutes ago, slorch said:

    ahh  I forgot and we actually attended it.   LOL

    I don't really know.  Obviously some from both academies made the trip on their own dime. If i had a guess, it would be 10 to 15% from each school at the most.

    In the current set-up of Army-Navy, the students bus back to West Point/ Annapolis after the game, so there is no hotel involved either.  Upper class students can opt out of the bus ride, but those arrangements are paid out of their own pocket.

    I've never heard from anyone who was a Cadet/ Midshipman for the 1983 game at The Rose Bowl.  Maybe that was a learning experience( disaster) on logistics of moving it away from the Northeast.

     

    Perhaps.  Also just could be a financial thing.  Who knows.

    Maybe the academies could do something like keep it in Philly and/or New York most years and explore moving it around like every third or fourth year.  Play the game in a different location during leap years or something.  I would think both academies would at least entertain the idea of moving the game around from a recruiting viewpoint, both athletic and general student population.  But, like most things in life, it probably comes down to a question of money.

  10. 16 hours ago, slorch said:

    4000 students from each school attend the game.  They typically bus in on the Atlantic seaboard sites.

    Not sure that's practical for Denver/ Dallas/ Seattle.  The academies being in virtually full attendance is a huge part of the pageantry of the game.  Even when they play Air Force, the road team never has remotely close to their full student body in attendance.

    The Army / Air Force game this past season was at JerryWorld.  Any idea on what the cadet attendance from each academy was for that?

  11. Did not see this posted anywhere else so SIAP.

    https://theconversation.com/did-a-giant-radio-telescope-in-china-just-discover-aliens-not-so-fast-185165

    Quote

    “Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.”
    Carl Sagan (Cosmos, 1980)

    This phrase is the standard that astronomers will be applying to a curious signal captured with China’s “Sky Eye” telescope that might be a transmission from alien technology.

    An article reporting the signal was posted on the website of China’s state-backed Science and Technology Daily newspaper, but was later removed. So have astronomers finally found evidence of intelligent found life beyond Earth? And is it being hushed up?

    We should be intrigued, but not too excited (yet). An interesting signal has to go through a lot of tests to check whether it truly carries the signature of extraterrestrial technology or is just the result of an unexpected source of terrestrial interference.

    And as for the deletion: media releases are normally timed for simultaneous release with peer-reviewed results – which are not yet available – so it was likely just released a bit early by mistake.

    An eye on the sky

    Sky Eye, which is offically known as the Five-hundred-meter Aperture Spherical Telescope (FAST), is the the largest and most sensitive single-dish radio telescope in the world. A engineering marvel, its gargantuan structure is built inside a natural basin in the mountains of Guizhou, China.

    The telescope is so huge it can’t be physically tilted, but it can be pointed in a direction by thousands of actuators that deform the telescope’s reflective surface. By deforming the surface, the location of the telescope’s focal point changes, and the telescope can look at a different part of the sky.

    FAST detects radiation at radio wavelengths (up to 10 cm) and is used for astronomical research in a wide range of areas. One area is the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, or SETI.

    SETI observations are mainly done in “piggy-back” mode, which means they are taken while the telescope is also running its primary science programs. In this way, large swaths of the sky can be scanned for signs of alien technology – or “technosignatures” – without getting in the way of other science operations. For special targets like nearby exoplanets, dedicated SETI observations are still carried out.

    The hunt for alien technology

    Technosignature searches have been ongoing since the 1960s, when the American astronomer Frank Drake pointed the 26-metre Tatel telescope toward two nearby Sun-like stars and scanned them for signs of technology.

    Over the years, technosignature searches have become far more rigorous and sensitive. The systems in place at FAST are also able to process billions of times more of the radio spectrum than Drake’s experiment.

    Despite these advances, we haven’t yet found any evidence of life beyond Earth.

    FAST sifts through enormous amounts of data. The telescope feeds 38 billion samples a second into a cluster of high-performance computers, which then produces exquisitely detailed charts of incoming radio signals. These charts are then searched for signals that look like technosignatures.

    With such a large collecting area, FAST can pick up incredibly faint signals. It is about 20 times more sensitive than Australia’s Murriyang telescope at the Parkes Radio Observatory. FAST could easily detect a transmitter on a nearby exoplanet with a similar output power to radar systems we have here on Earth.

    The trouble with sensitivity

    The trouble with being so sensitive is that you can uncover radio interference that would otherwise be too faint to detect. We SETI researchers have had this problem before.

    Last year, using Murriyang, we detected an extremely interesting signal we called BLC1.

    However, it turned out to be very strange interference (not aliens). To uncover its true nature, we had to develop a new verification framework.

    With BLC1, it took about a year from when it was initially reported to when peer-reviewed analysis was published. Similarly, we may need to wait a while for the FAST signal to be analysed in depth.

    Professor Zhang Tongjie, chief scientist for the China Extraterrestrial Civilization Research Group, acknowledged this in the Science & Technology Daily report:

    The possibility that the suspicious signal is some kind of radio interference is also very high, and it needs to be further confirmed and ruled out. This may be a long process.

    And we may need to get used to a gap between finding candidate signals and verifying them. FAST and other telescopes are likely to find many more signals of interest.

    Most of these will turn out to be interference, but some may be new astrophysical phenomena, and some may be bona fide technosignatures.

    Stay intrigued

    Will FAST’s extraordinary signals meet the burden of extraordinary evidence? Until their work is reviewed and published, it’s still too early to say, but it’s encouraging that their SETI search algorithms are finding curious signals.

    Between FAST, the Breakthrough Listen initiative, and the SETI Institute’s COSMIC program, the SETI field is seeing a lot of interest and activity. And it’s not just radio waves: searches are also underway using optical and infrared light.

    As for right now: stay intrigued, but don’t get too excited.

     

  12. On 5/4/2022 at 11:16 PM, ScottS said:

    Any of you NYC area posters attending the John Hinckley Jr. concert on July 8th in Brooklyn at the Market Hotel?  No idea if Jodie Foster is planning on attending.

    https://www.markethotel.org/calendar/2022/6/17/scenic-presents-voivod-63h9y

    image.png.75cc0762f96d6a91062236d2c47ebbfd.png

    I am loathe to quote myself, but if anyone was thinking about making the John Hinckley Jr. Concert at the Market Hotel, well, you are out of luck.

    https://deadline.com/2022/06/john-hinckley-jr-brooklyn-concert-canceled-market-hotel-1235046409/

    Quote

    John Hinckley Jr.’s  planned Brooklyn concert was actually the third stop on his so-called Redemption Tour to cancel, says the singer-songrwriter who attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan in 1981.

    “I’ve had 3 concerts cancelled – Chicago, Connecticut and now Brooklyn,” Hinckley tweeted this afternoon. “The promoter is looking for another venue.”

    Concerts at Chicago’s Logan Square Auditorium, which had been planned for July 23, and a New Year’s Eve concert at the Space Ballroom in Hamden, Connecticut, apparently were canceled prior to the announcement by the Brooklyn venue Market Hotel yesterday.

    In an email sent by the Market Hotel to ticketholders yesterday, the venue said that Scenic Events NYC, Hinckley’s promoter, was seeking a replacement venue for the concert. “If a new location is secured, you will be contacted via this email address in advance of the date, with the new location information,” the message states. “If the organizers are unable to secure a new venue for the concert, then the purchase price of your ticket(s) will be refunded within 3 days of the scheduled event date.”

     
    hinckley-1.jpg?w=681&h=383&crop=1
    John Hinckley John Hinckley YouTube

    John Hinckley Jr.’s  planned Brooklyn concert was actually the third stop on his so-called Redemption Tour to cancel, says the singer-songrwriter who attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan in 1981.

    “I’ve had 3 concerts cancelled – Chicago, Connecticut and now Brooklyn,” Hinckley tweeted this afternoon. “The promoter is looking for another venue.”

    Concerts at Chicago’s Logan Square Auditorium, which had been planned for July 23, and a New Year’s Eve concert at the Space Ballroom in Hamden, Connecticut, apparently were canceled prior to the announcement by the Brooklyn venue Market Hotel yesterday.

    In an email sent by the Market Hotel to ticketholders yesterday, the venue said that Scenic Events NYC, Hinckley’s promoter, was seeking a replacement venue for the concert. “If a new location is secured, you will be contacted via this email address in advance of the date, with the new location information,” the message states. “If the organizers are unable to secure a new venue for the concert, then the purchase price of your ticket(s) will be refunded within 3 days of the scheduled event date.”

    On its Twitter page, Scenic Presents describes itself as a “Brooklyn based shadowy organization fighting faux-indie, boring, corporate chain rock shows since the new millennium.”

    Hinckley was released from court supervision Wednesday 41 years after his attempted assassination in 1981 of Reagan. The long-planned concert at the hip venue in Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood was canceled out of safety concerns, the venue operators said yesterday.

    Hinckley, a singer-songwriter who has released his music on streaming sites and a YouTube channel, was set to have made his first post-release concert appearance at the Market Hotel venue on July 8. The show, which quickly sold out in recent weeks, was canceled by the venue today for what the proprietors said was, in part, concern “for the safety of our vulnerable communities…”

    Though the venue operators defended the initial decision to open the club to Hinckley, noting that the 67-year-old singer-guitarist’s planned concert tour “sends a message that mental health issues and a criminal past can be recovered from and atoned for, after serving one’s debt to society and getting real treatment” – ultimately the security risks weren’t worth the gamble.

    “If we were going to host an event for the principle, and potentially put others at risk in doing so, it shouldn’t be for some stunt booking — no offense to the artist,” the venue said in a statement on its Instagram page.  “We might feel differently if we believed the music was important and transcended the infamy, but that’s just not the case here.”

    All restrictions on Hinckley’s freedom were lifted today in a move that has been expected since last fall, when U.S. District Court Judge Paul L. Friedman said he’d free Hinckley if he remained mentally stable and residing in the Virginia community where he has lived under supervision since 2016.

    “After 41 years 2 months and 15 days, FREEDOM AT LAST!!!, ” Hinckley tweeted just after midnight today.

    Hinckley was found not guilty by reason of insanity after shooting Reagan on March 30, 1981, wounding the president as well as police officer Thomas Delahanty and Secret Service agent Tim McCarthy. More seriously wounded was Reagan’s Press Secretary James Brady, who was permanently disabled and died from his injuries 33 years later. Hinckley would later claim that he carried out the attempted assassination to garner the attention of actress Jodie Foster.

    In yesterday’s statement from the Market Hotel, the venue operators say that the event came to the Hotel through “a third-party promoter, and we approved it because it sounded like an interesting gathering and a memorable night. Hosting provocative happenings for its own sake is valid, and should be part of any venue’s reason to exist.

    “There was a time when a place could host a thing like this, maybe a little offensive, and the reaction would be ‘it’s just a guy playing a show, who does it hurt — it’s a free country.’ We aren’t living in that kind of free country anymore, for better or for worse.”

    Here is the venue’s full statement:

    After a lot of serious consideration, we are canceling the scheduled event at Market Hotel with John Hinckley.

    This even came to Market Hotel through a third-party promoter, and we approved it because it sounded like an interesting gathering and a memorable night. Hosting provocative happenings for its own sake is valid, and should be part of any venue’s reason to exist. The tour also sends a message that mental health issues and a criminal past can be recovered from and atoned for, after serving one’s debt to society and getting real treatment.

    There was a time when a place could host a thing like this, maybe a little offensive, and the reaction would be “it’s just a guy playing a show, who does it hurt — it’s a free country.” We aren’t living in that kind of free country anymore, for better or for worse.

    It’s worth reiterating that this guy performing harms no one in any practical way. This is a sexagenarian with an acoustic guitar. All the outrage and concern are entirely about the quote message it sends unquote. Make no mistake: canceling this concert will not deter future assassins and will have no effect on mass shootings, and it certainly won’t reverse the awfulness of what Hinckley did 40 years ago. It’s also ludicrous to claim allowing the show might inspire some future killer — “I wanna be like Hinckley — he got to play Market Hotel.” We’re a little room and it’s just a concert. It does not “matter” — beyond the strong emotions it has been used to stoke.

    We do believe that ex-cons and people will mental illness can recover, and that we should want them to maintain hope that they can better themselves and earn a chance to fully rejoin society… but we are living in dangerous times, and after being presented with and reflecting on some very real and worsening threats and hate facing our vulnerable communities — our family here in nightlife — and after seeing the nature of who this booking has antagonized, and who and what else those same folks are upset about: we don’t see the need to allow someone who did something awful to skip the line and play even our middle size independent community stage — and in doing so put our vulnerable communities at risk (without their consent) — especially if that artist wouldn’t have sold the tickets without the story of who they are and the violent thing they did.

    If we were going to host an event for the principle, and potentially put others at risk in doing so, it shouldn’t be for some stunt booking — no offense to the artist. We might feel differently if we believed the music was important and transcended the infamy, but that’s just not the case here (though any artist can get there — even someone who committed awful crimes and suffered mental illness).

    It is not worth the gamble on the safety of our vulnerable communities to give a guy a microphone and a paycheck from his art who hasn’t had to earn it, who we don’t care about on an artistic level, and who upsets people in a dangerously radicalized, reactionary climate.
    – love, MARKET HOTEL

     

  13. Clemson hires Erik Bakich from Michigan to be its new head baseball coach.

    https://theclemsoninsider.com/2022/06/14/clemson-has-its-next-baseball-coach-erik-bakich/

    I thought I would check out what MGoBlog had to say about the move. This part of the post about Bakich leaving has me scratching my head:

    Quote

    But such is life for a school in a conference that doesn't care about the sport. Over the last 30 years, an alliance of big and small schools in the South have pushed the baseball and softball seasons deeper into winter, forcing northern teams to play tournaments in Florida, Arizona, and California in January, February, and March, before trying to squeeze in a conference schedule in April and half of May. They've also allowed the NCAA to limit schools to 12 scholarships (which can be divvied up in fractions) per sport. It's an arrangement that's great for Southeastern power schools, which no longer have to compete with the moneyed programs, better degrees, and richer baseball histories of the North for top talent, and have always supplemented the meager scholarship restrictions by other means. It's also perfect for small southern programs, which often get to host those tournaments, and don't have to divert funds from football to be reasonably competitive. Talk of the Big Ten joining with other northern conferences to stem this tide, either by threatening to leave the NCAA, doing so, or hosting a second season over the summer, has thus far only amounted to that.

    While I do not know all of the ins and outs of how college baseball programs work with regards to schedules and scholarships, I feel confident in my belief that scholarship limits in baseball are not a result of big, bad, dumb southern schools.  I also seem to recall several years ago the northern schools forcing a later start to the baseball season.  Am I remembering that wrong?

    Also, what baseball programs in the north have rich baseball histories?  I know Michigan, Minnesota, and Ohio State have some CWS appearances and a few national titles but I would not put those histories up against Southern Cal, the Arizona Schools, Texas, Fullerton, Stanford, or any other of about half a dozen southern or western schools.

  14. 9 hours ago, Mileslong said:

    USGA doing bits, look who’s lockers are side by side, lulz

    3e0870545a49cce98f5b87ba15e0a92c.jpg

    Must be the 2020s version of the Prick Pairing.

    Quote

    The groupings for the US Open have long been a source of amusement for golf insiders.

    As revealed in John Feinstein’s book Open, former USGA executive directors Frank Hannigan and David Fay instigated a number of traditions, including putting three players together who were generally disliked by fellow golfers, known informally as the “prick pairing”.

    At the 1998 US Open, born-again Christians Tom Lehman, Bernhard Langer and Steve Jones were grouped together, nicknaming themselves the “God squad”, while golfers who were known to enjoy the nightlife were routinely assigned the earliest start times in the morning.

    According to Feinstein, Fay decided he’d gone too far one year at the US Women’s Open when he grouped three players together because they’d all been in therapy.

    “That was over the top,” Fay said.

     

  15. According to ESPN, one of the Marines that perished in this crash was the son of Dodgers legend Steve Sax.

    https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/34075356/son-ex-los-angeles-dodgers-player-steve-sax-five-marines-killed-training-flight-crash

    Quote

    LOS ANGELES -- Former Dodgers player Steve Sax says his 33-year-old son, who had always dreamed of being a pilot, was among five U.S. Marines killed during a training flight crash earlier this week in the California desert.

    Capt. John J. Sax was among the aircrew of an Osprey tiltrotor aircraft that went down during training in a remote area in Imperial County, about 115 miles east of San Diego and about 50 miles from Yuma, Arizona.

    "It is with complete devastation that I announce that my precious son, Johnny was one of the five US Marines that perished on Wednesday, June 8, in the Osprey Military crash near San Diego," Steve Sax said in a statement published Saturday by CBSLA-TV. "For those of you that knew Johnny, you saw his huge smile, bright light, his love for his family, the Marines, the joy of flying airplanes and defending our country! He was my hero and the best man I know, there was no better person to defend our country."

    Sax said his son had wanted to be a pilot since he was young and would talk about the types of planes that were flying overhead while playing in the outfield in Little League baseball.

    "There was never any doubt from a young age that Johnny would be a pilot and his passion was to fly!" Steve Sax said. "This loss will change my life forever and is a loss to not only the Marines but this world!"

    Steve Sax played in the major leagues from 1981 to 1994, winning two World Series during his seven years as a second baseman with the Dodgers. Fans and the team offered condolences on social media.

    "The Los Angeles Dodgers are saddened to hear about the passing of Steve Sax's son, John, and the five Marines who lost their lives in this week's tragic helicopter accident. Our thoughts and condolences go out to their families and friends," the Dodgers said in a tweet Saturday.

    John J. Sax, of Placer, California, was one of two pilots killed in the crash, along with Capt. Nicholas P. Losapio, 31, of Rockingham, New Hampshire.

    Also killed were three tiltrotor crew chiefs: Cpl. Nathan E. Carlson, 21, of Winnebago, Illinois; Cpl. Seth D. Rasmuson, 21, of Johnson, Wyoming; and Lance Cpl. Evan A. Strickland, 19, of Valencia, New Mexico.

    The Marines were based at Camp Pendleton and assigned to Marine Medium Tiltrotor Squadron 364 of Marine Aircraft Group 39, part of the 3rd Marine Aircraft Wing headquartered at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar in San Diego.

    The Osprey, a hybrid airplane and helicopter, flew in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan but has been criticized by some as unsafe. It is designed to take off like a helicopter, rotate its propellers to a horizontal position and cruise like an airplane.

    The cause of the crash was under investigation.

     

    • Like 4
  16. On 6/10/2022 at 2:52 PM, Blotto said:

    No idea how to embed the video from the GD page, buy they posted the same video on their youtube page:

     

    Showing my age.  I really never think to look on YouTube for something like this.

  17. James Webb Telescope hit by micrometeoroid just months into flight.

    Quote

    NASA's next-generation space observatory has sustained its first noticeable micrometeoroid impact less than six months after launch, but the agency isn't too concerned.

    The James Webb Space Telescope, also known as Webb or JWST, launched on Dec. 25, 2021. It has spent the intervening months trekking out to its deep-space post and preparing for science observations, a complicated process that has gone remarkably smoothly; recently, NASA said it expects to unveil the first science-quality images from the telescope on July 12.

     

    Now, the agency announced(opens in new tab) on Wednesday (June 8) that the observatory has experienced its first few impacts from tiny pieces of space debris called micrometeoroids. But don't panic: Neither the observatory's schedule nor its scientific legacy is expected to suffer.

    "With Webb's mirrors exposed to space, we expected that occasional micrometeoroid impacts would gracefully degrade telescope performance over time," Lee Feinberg, Webb optical telescope element manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, said in the statement. "Since launch, we have had four smaller measurable micrometeoroid strikes that were consistent with expectations, and this one more recently that is larger than our degradation predictions assumed."

    The most serious of the impacts occurred between May 23 and May 25 and affected the C3 segment of the 18-piece gold-plated hexagonal primary mirror, according to the statement.

    All spacecraft are expected to experience and designed to withstand micrometeoroid impacts, and JWST is no different. The observatory's engineers even subjected mirror samples to real impacts to understand how such events might affect the mission's science.
     
    However, the recent impact was larger than those that mission personnel had modeled or could test on the ground, according to the statement.
    Despite the impact coming so early in the observatory's tenure, NASA officials are confident that the $10 billion telescope will still perform adequately.
     
    "We always knew that Webb would have to weather the space environment, which includes harsh ultraviolet light and charged particles from the sun, cosmic rays from exotic sources in the galaxy, and occasional strikes by micrometeoroids within our solar system," Paul Geithner, technical deputy project manager at NASA Goddard, said in the statement. "We designed and built Webb with performance margin — optical, thermal, electrical, mechanical — to ensure it can perform its ambitious science mission even after many years in space."

    In addition, JWST launched with its optics in even better shape than the agency bargained for, officials noted in the statement.

    Some micrometeoroid impacts can be predicted, officials wrote. For example, when the spacecraft is set to fly through known meteor showers, personnel can maneuver JWST's optical systems into safety for these events. However, the recent impact was not part of such a meteor shower and the statement classified it as "an unavoidable chance event."
     
    After an impact occurs, engineers can individually adjust the 18 primary mirror segments on the observatory to keep the mirror as a whole finely tuned.
     

    As the JWST team continues to evaluate the impact, NASA is focused on better understanding both the particular event and the environment that the observatory will experience throughout its mission. The telescope is orbiting what scientists call the Earth-sun Lagrange point 2, located nearly 1 million miles (1.5 million kilometers) away from Earth in the direction opposite the sun.

    "We will use this flight data to update our analysis of performance over time and also develop operational approaches to assure we maximize the imaging performance of Webb to the best extent possible for many years to come," Feinberg said.

     

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