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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

Micrometeroid impacts whacked the LISA Pathfinder spacecraft 54 times in over 4,000 hours of travel.

Looking into the never-ending dark of space, it's easy to think of the solar system as an empty void of nothingness. But in the inner solar system micrometeroids, tiny specks of space dust invisible to the naked eye, fly around the Earth at speeds in excess of 40,000 mph. That presents potential hazards for spacecraft we've dropped into orbit to survey the cosmos. But just how big of a problem might the microscopic dust be?

Researchers at NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) wanted to find out. Using the Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) Pathfinder, or LPF, which operated in orbit between January 2016 and July 2017, the team conducted a survey of sorts, examining how often their spacecraft was slammed by space dust.

The research, published in the Astrophysical Journal in September, details 54 collisions with the LPF spacecraft. The mission was essentially a tech demo -- the equipment included on LPF are to be used in the fully functional LISA observatory. The core mission of LPF was to show the technology onboard could be used for a fully-fledged mission in the future. However, prior to launch, researchers realized the spacecraft's uniquely sensitive instruments could be used to detect very small impacts.

Micrometeoroid Events in LISA Pathfinder^[$], The Astrophysical Journal (DOI: 10.3847/1538-4357/ab3649)

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