Recommended reading

How to Find an InSight Mars Landing Event Across Europe and North America

News
By published

Viewing parties around the world will tune in this Monday (Nov. 26) to watch NASA's latest Martian probe finally attempt to land on the Red Planet. 

NASA's InSight Mars Lander has been steadily approaching Mars for three of Earth's seasons. The spacecraft launched from California during the North American springtime, on May 5, and it is still journeying toward our neighboring planet. But the long haul finishes Monday (Nov. 26),  when InSight will finally land on the flat plains of Elysium Planitia near Mars' equator.

Museums, libraries, college campuses and even public spaces like Times Square in New York City will be airing InSight's landing, set to occur at about 3 p.m. ET (12 p.m. PT) on Nov. 26. NASA has provided an extensive list of viewing locations, available here. Space.com will also broadcast the landing here, courtesy of NASA TV. [NASA's InSight Mars Lander: Full Coverage]

Or you could watch from Mars. (The planet humorously sits on the top slot of NASA's event-viewing list.)

The landing sites of past and present Mars missions are labeled on this map, provided by NASA. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

InSight will be a stationary probe. It's equipped with instruments that can measure subsurface movements and heat flow to help scientists learn about Mars' interior over the course of a two-year mission. InSight will be NASA's first Mars landing since the Curiosity rover in 2012.

Colleges and universities are hosting public viewing parties. The California Institute of Technology's event will feature guests from the nonprofit space-interest group The Planetary Society. The University of Alaska Fairbanks' event will be held in their Vis Space visualization environment and will include a round of Mars trivia. 

Major viewing events at museums include "Countdown to InSight" at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum's Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia; a "NASA Mars Insight Landing Livestream" at The Museum of Flight in Seattle ; a 6-hour pop-up Landing Event at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago; an "InSight Lands on Mars" simulation at the American Museum of Natural History in New York; and many more. 

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory created this composite image of Earth and Mars. These are their relative sizes, not their actual distance apart: NASA's InSight Mars Lander will have traveled over six months to reach the Red Planet from Earth. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

Libraries across the country will also host events. Nebraska's Wilson Public Library, North Dakota's Grand Forks Public Library, California's San Gabriel Library and Massachusetts' Brockton Public Library, to name just a handful, are having InSight landing gatherings. 

People in Germany and France can attend viewing events, as well. The Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Göttingen, Germany, will host a "Quick Guide to a Landing on Mars" lecture, for example. And one of the several events hosted in France includes an evening program, featuring two scientists, at the City of Science and Industry in Paris. 

Follow Doris Elin Salazar on Twitter@salazar_elin. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.

Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community@space.com.

Doris Elin Urrutia
Doris Elin Urrutia
Contributing Writer

Doris is a science journalist and Space.com contributor. She received a B.A. in Sociology and Communications at Fordham University in New York City. Her first work was published in collaboration with London Mining Network, where her love of science writing was born. Her passion for astronomy started as a kid when she helped her sister build a model solar system in the Bronx. She got her first shot at astronomy writing as a Space.com editorial intern and continues to write about all things cosmic for the website. Doris has also written about microscopic plant life for Scientific American’s website and about whale calls for their print magazine. She has also written about ancient humans for Inverse, with stories ranging from how to recreate Pompeii’s cuisine to how to map the Polynesian expansion through genomics. She currently shares her home with two rabbits. Follow her on twitter at @salazar_elin.