by Txchnologist Staff

NASA is taking its next-generation James Webb Space Telescope on the road to Austin, Texas, in March.

Those attending the South by Southwest festival on March 8-10 will get to see a life-sized model of the Hubble’s successor, an advanced instrument designed to make astronomical observations in the infrared portion of the electromagnetic spectrum. NASA is angling to launch the telescope in 2018 and begin a science mission to find the first galaxies that formed in the early Universe.

Click through to see an infographic on how the James Webb will unfold out of the Ariane 5 spacecraft that carries it into space.

(This image shows how Webb will be folded and stowed in the Ariane 5 spacecraft. Webb’s solar panel is deployed about 30 minutes after launch to provide power for the mission. The rest of the deployments take place in the next several days as the telescope moves into position at the second Lagrangian point, about 1.5 million km away from the Earth in the direction of the outer planets. Graphic courtesy Northrop Grumman.)

Top Image: The full-scale model of the James Webb Space Telescope erected in Dublin, Ireland.