TRUE

The James Webb Space Telescope successfully launched on December 25, 2021, from Europe's Spaceport in French Guiana aboard an Ariane 5 rocket. Official mission specifications from NASA and the European Space Agency confirm that the observatory's primary mirror measures 6.5 meters in diameter.23 This mirror is constructed of 18 hexagonal segments made of gold-coated beryllium, which were designed to fold into the rocket's fairing for launch and deploy once in space. Documentation from the Space Telescope Science Institute states that this 6.5-meter aperture provides a light-collecting area of approximately 25 square meters, allowing the telescope to detect faint infrared light from the early universe. The observatory reached its operational orbit at the second Lagrange point in January 2022 and has since remained a primary tool for international astronomical research.