James Webb Space Telescope (2021–present)

JWST's 6.5-meter gold-coated beryllium mirror collects six times more light than Hubble, enabling it to detect galaxies forming just 300 million years after the Big Bang — rivaling the best ground-based observatories by a factor of 10 in infrared sensitivity. Stationed at the L2 Lagrange point, it has characterized exoplanet atmospheres with 100 times greater spectral resolution than Spitzer and revealed protoplanetary disk structures invisible to any previous orbital telescope. Its 2022 debut image of SMACS 0723 showed thousands of galaxies in a single shot, outperforming #1 Hubble's Ultra Deep Field by capturing 4 times fainter objects.