Nov 25 - Landing on Mars Is Still Hard

November 25 Landing on Mars Is Still Hard by:

Artist's concept of a spacecraft approaching Mars prior to landing. Image via NASA/JPL-Caltech. Landing on Mars is still hard There's a reason space engineers describe landing on Mars as "7 minutes of terror." Read more. On Monday … Watch the Insight Mars landing NASA engineers hope to broadcast word of a successful touchdown at 20:00 UTC (3 p.m. EST; translate UTC to your time). It's the 1st Mars landing in 6 years! How to watch. How will NASA know when InSight touches down?   Signals from Mars will take 8 minutes to travel to Earth on Monday. By the time we hear that InSight has reached the top of Mars' atmosphere, the lander will have already touched down safely ... or crashed. Read more. Artist's concept of the InSight Mars spacecraft landing on Mars, via NASA.

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Tonight … The Moon and the Twins The stars are Castor and Pollux in the constellation Gemini. The represent the legendary Twins of sky mythology. From mid-northern latitudes, they appear over your eastern horizon with the moon by around 8 to 9 p.m. From the Southern Hemisphere, they all ascend in the east a bit later in the evening. Read more.

Here's where InSight will touch down on Monday InSight will touch down on the western edge of a flat, smooth expanse of lava plain called Elysium Planitia, about 4 degrees north of Mars' equator. "If it were an ice cream, it would be vanilla," quipped Bruce Banerdt, InSight's principal investigator. Read more. Submit your photo to EarthSky here! Did a friend forward EarthSkyNews to you? Click here to get your own subscription!

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