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NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover: Discovery+ and Science Channel Prepare for Historic Landing With Marathon Lineup (Exclusive)

As NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover is scheduled to touch down on the Red Planet Thursday, Feb. 18, […]

As NASA‘s Perseverance Mars Rover is scheduled to touch down on the Red Planet Thursday, Feb. 18, discovery+ and Science Channel are getting viewers ready to celebrate the historic moment with a lineup filled with Mars and space programming, PopCulture.com can exclusively announce. Commemorating one of the most ambitious Mars rover missions to date, discovery+ will stream NASA Mars Landing: The Rover Arrives Thursday following a successful landing (scheduled for about 3:55 p.m. ET.)

The Rover Arrives features some of the most incredible moments from the landing, including the first images that will be beamed back from Mars. Providing commentary for the special is Mark Rober, who worked on earlier Mars Curiosity rover mission at JPL and has since developed a huge following on YouTube, and NASA expert Ken Williford, who serves as the Deputy Project Scientist for the NASA Mars 2020 mission as well as the director of the JPLโ€™s abcLab. Also streaming Thursday on discovery+ is NASA Mars Landing: Inside the Mission, which gives viewers an in-depth look at the Mars Perseverance Rover.

People can also watch Perseverance touch down on Mars live on Discovery’s TikTok Thursday, starting at 3:15 p.m. ET and featuring Rober as a commentator. Streaming the event live as it happens, viewers will hear the first sounds ever heard from microphones on Mars.

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Getting prepared for the big landing throughout the day, Science Channel is celebrating some of NASA’s greatest missions with a marathon of space programming. Included in Thursday’s lineup is Telescope, which follows the high-stakes mission of building NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope, as well as Above and Beyond: NASA’s Journey to Tomorrow, which honors the people behind NASA’s decades-long journey to explore our solar system. Also airing is a series of NASA’s Greatest Missions specials, which explore some of the most notable space exploration achievements in human history, including Hubble, Voyager and Juno.

The full Science Channel lineup on Thursday, Feb. 18:

  • 9 a.m. ET Telescope
  • 10 a.m. ET Above and Beyond: NASA’s Journey to Tomorrow
  • 12 p.m. ET NASA’s Greatest Missions: Journey to Saturn’s Rings
  • 1 p.m. ET NASA’s Greatest Missions: Secret History of Juno
  • 2 p.m. ET NASA’s Greatest Missions: Secret History of Voyager
  • 3 p.m. ET NASA’s Greatest Missions: Pluto: Back from the Dead
  • 4 p.m. ET NASA’s Greatest Missions: Hubble: Thirty Years of Discovery
  • 6-10 p.m. ET Mysteries of the Abandoned
  • 10 p.m. ET NASA Mars Landing: Inside the Mission
  • 11 p.m. ET Mysteries of the Abandoned