If everything goes off well, the first earthling will land on Mars in the first quarter of the next century. The advent of the 22nd century will probably see the setting up of a human colony on the Red planet.

Mars will rule the Nehru planetarium from next week. The planetarium will run four shows on the `invasion' of Mars by mankind. The 50-minute film has been made with the help of photographs and computer animation with a view to help people grasp the importance of the Red planet.

The film starts off with a small commentary on the sky and the stars. Various constellations are explained in simple lingo, as the commentator Siddharth Kak, takes the viewer from Mumbai to Flagstaff in USA, a journey during which the existence of canals on Mars is explained to the spectators. Thediscovery of canals is considered important because it was a sign that water had existed on the planet some time back. Since water is always associated with life, this discovery became the basis of intense scientific research on the planet, resulting in the landing of the Sojourner, a NASA space vehicle, blasting off from Cape Canaveral on a Delta-2 rocket.

The film then takes the viewer along the path of the rocket, and the mechanisms involved while landing on the surface of Mars. ``Man's first roving emissary to Mars landed on the Red planet on July 4, 1997,'' Kak's impressive audio rendering holds the audience's attention.

Then comes the turn of the Sojouner, a 10-kg six-wheeled vehicle, which captured universal imagination for days together as it rolled through Martian surface clicking photographs, identifying the chemical composition of rocks by bombarding them with radiation and then examining the after effects. Interesting details like how it took ten minutes for a message to reach the Pathfinderfrom the control room on earth and why the Sojourner was so named, are also deftly included in the script.

The show is meant for the general public, as amply proved by the simple narration and colourful animation. The script by Dr J J Rawal and the editing by P K Ravindranath are crisp yet informative. It is a show that the average Mumbaiite would enjoy, for the future generations might live on the Red planet.