Mars

1. Prepare yourselves. The Martians are coming.

2. Humans have known about the red planet since prehistoric times, and it has pricked the imagination as the most likely of our immediate celestial neighbours to be capable of bearing life. Tonight the new Beagle 2 rocket will be launched in search of answers about the fourth rock from the sun.

3. "Twinkle, twinkle, planet Earth, how I wonder what you're worth ... You'll be worthless when I'm through zapping, blasting, crushing you!" Thus sang Marvin the Martian, a very angry, helmeted alien who featured in Bugs Bunny cartoons and whose life goal was to blow up Earth because it blocked his view of Venus.

4. Fun stuff, but then you have to remember Orson Welles's US radio broadcast of War of the Worlds in 1938, which, presented as a news show, left people genuinely scared of a Martian invasion.

5. Don't panic yet. It is unlikely that a more advanced civilisation than our own will be found. After all, when the first Viking probe landed on Mars in 1976 (finding a "face"), scientists looking for other forms of life in the solar system gave up. The discovery of simpler life forms is more likely; a fossilised microbial life form discovered in a meteorite in 1996 is said to have come from Mars.

6. The unmanned craft is part of a British project, led by Colin Pillinger of the Open University. The team hopes touchdown will be in December 2003.

7. In 1962, bubble-gum cards set about warning the world that any day could be the day when "Mars Attacks!". These 'Martians' were brought to life by director Tim Burton in 1996 in a film of the same name

8. If Mars is the God of War, then Martians may be intrigued by the Beagle's call signal, composed by Damon Albarn. The Mars lander will be equipped to "sniff" for organic chemicals that might be a clue to the presence of life below the surface.

9. Water is needed to sustain life as mankind knows it. So when Nasa chiefs announced the discovery of a frozen ocean beneath the planet's surface the scientists knew there was a real possibility of life, so fuelling the impetus for the Beagle's expedition.

10. Some people don't want to wait. The US-based Mars society, unwilling to wait for proof of life on the planet they love, are already making preparations for a move to Mars.