WASHINGTON, July 10: Whwn man first landed on the moon in 1969, millions of people across the world might have looked out at the sky in awe, wondering how on earth did the astronauts swing it.

When the Pathfinder landed on Mars last week, millions of people were huddled before their computer screens looking, at near real-time, up close pictures of the event with a much better idea of how the rocket scientists did it.

Blame it, or rather credit it, on the Internet.

No single event has so dramatically illustrated the power, reach and affinity of the Internet than the Pathfinder mission. In the week since the spacecraft landed on Mars, Pathfinder sites on the World Wide Web have recorded close to 200 million hits. The single most popular site maintained by NASA alone recorded a 100 million hits on Friday, a record for any event in the short history of the Internet.

What makes the Internet popular is the easy interactivity it affords, coupled with constant updates. No more fretting about some sloppy reporter struggling to convey the story on television. No more irksome experts and muddled analysts. On the Net, you are at once student and master, as you navigate your way through thousands of pages of pictures and text on everything you wanted to know about Mars, Pathfinder, and indeed, rocket science.

Not that television has lagged behind. Compared to the grainy, black and white picture of Neil Armstrong's giant step on behalf of mankind, the Pathfinder epic has received saturation colour coverage. The ubiquitous CNN was all over the place with the upstart MSNBC trailing it. Discovery channel provided more refined coverage while C-Span offered non-stop relay of every single word uttered by NASA scientists. Every angle was covered and every notion explored.

``But none of it is comparable to the `do-it-on-your-own' feeling you get on the Internet,'' says Anantha Krishna, a software programmer with the National Institute of Health, one of the millions here who are constantly logged on. With more than 60 million Americans now having access to the Internet, this was one heck of a net-fest.

And it is not just workaday Americans who are savouring mankind's progress on the net. On July 4, the day Pathfinder landed, Vice President Al Gore was hunched over his computer at home, downloading the first pictures of the Pathfinder landing which NASA scientists zipped across exclusively to him. Since then Gore, an acknowledged science buff is said to have spent many hours before the terminal.

And why not. There is a movable feast of material out there. Or rather, in there. Want to see a 360 degree VR movie of Mars from Pathfinder? Go to the National Space Society's ``Mars Madness!'' siteImage gallery. The NASA Jet Propulsion Lab's homepage has constant news updates and pictures and video. Engineering data, rocket science and even Martian weather reports are available for the asking. There's even a site up already for the Mars Global Surveyor which is yet to go up there.

Such incredible riches on the Net has spurred a huge interest in all things related to space. Over the weekend, hordes descended on the movie Men In Black, a take-off on aliens, enabling the film to gross more than $ 50 million in just the first three days.

Contact, another space movie based on a Carl Sagan book, is due for release the coming weekend. One wire story spoke of a space mania sweeping across the United States.

Experts say mega events like the Pathfinder landing and the Deep Blue-Kasparov chess match will spur the growth of the Net and guide it towards a more interactive and visual-oriented medium.

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.