[Termitiono]

Not sure we're you getting this from.

They made plenty of simulation s and probably enough around this topic. They had enough time after all

[huhtenberg]

They had a ton of time indeed, but they didn't cover this particular eventuality. It's literally in the same post. Perhaps give it a read?

  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.

[Termitiono]

This still doesn't indicate anything.

It doesn't say how much bigger.

My point I'm trying to make: the original comment indicates to me that we need to worry. For me it conveys much more speculation than I think is reasonable right now.

For example they were also not expecting to have such a great optical resolution.

[BobbyJo]

> This still doesn't indicate anything.

It does indicate something. It indicates that

> they weren't expecting this to happen so soon after the launch

The delta matters, but no matter the delta, the fact that it defied expectation stands.

[wiz21c]

How does one even collect information about the probability of being hit by something that big in space ? They counted hits on things (ships) that came back from space ?

[Termitiono]

The lagrange point itself has a probability how realistic it is that something can be cought in it / if it stays there.

There are other points were stones collect like l4 and l5.

Then we have Hubble (and over 100 others as a benchmark, a few ships/missions like to the moon and Mars.

Herschel space observatory was also on l2. There is a wiki Artikel called 'list of objects at langrange points'

[jaggederest]

They've launched flat plates made of aerogel to capture orbital debris.

For example: https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/stardust/home/index.html

[wolfram74]

Simulations don't matter if your starting parameters don't fit reality, maybe the population of dust in this range was poorly understood around the L2 point? We've got loads of missions there, but maybe none of them would notice anything like this.

[Termitiono]

In the current situation with this amount of information it could be a lot of different things.

Also from a statistical standpoint it's totally valid that this event happened now as it could just mean that a similar event is not happening for the next 50 years.

[klyrs]

> it could just mean that a similar event is not expected to happen for the next 50 years.

Fixed that for ya. There are no guarantees. Micrometeorites are both fast and tiny, and you can only make statistical estimates. But when the rubber hits the road, it's entirely possible for 100d20 to come up 100 twice in a row.