posted 02-27-2015 02:56 PM               

Artist's 'Apollo 18' moon mission launching onto Times Square billboards

The countdown is on to the launch of Apollo 18 and you're invited to witness it from New York City's Times Square.

Beginning at 11:57 p.m. EST on Sunday (March 1), more than a dozen of Time Square's iconic electronic billboards will broadcast the final minutes ticking down to the launch of a towering Saturn V rocket on a historic mission to land astronauts on the moon.

Can't be there on Sunday? No problem. The three-minute countdown will be repeat every night throughout the month of March.

"Apollo XVIII," created by artist Marco Brambilla, weaves archival footage from real NASA missions with computer-generated imagery to form a countdown to a fictional flight to the moon. It will be shown on Times Square's electronic billboards from 11:57 p.m. to midnight each night in March as part of "Midnight Moment," a presentation by the Times Square Advertising Coalition and Times Square Arts.