Nasa engineers perform tests on a life-size replica of the Martian rover Opportunity. (File picture)

Calcutta, April 3: Remember the feeling of being in a strange place where the road-signs did not make sense? Well, chances are that won?t happen on Mars if you can read either Hindi or Bengali.

Both languages have made it to the Red planet, etched on the ?first and most photographed object? sent to another planet ? Martian rovers Spirit and Opportunity.

Sharing space with 20 other languages, ?Mangal?, in Hindi and Bengali, shimmers bright in black-and-gold on the face of plaques perched on the rovers currently scouring the planet for signs of life.

The ?posts? for Nasa?s Mission Mars, each a three-inch aluminium square weighing around 60 gm, were fixed on the vehicles to serve as sundials and to calibrate the Pancam (panoramic camera) to give scientists back on earth an idea of the true hues of the fourth rock from the sun.

?The Pancam takes photographs of the plaques each time it has to have a shot of the topography around. Because we know the colour of the plaque, we set it as a standard to figure out the real colours of the planet,? Amitabh Ghosh, an IIT Kharagpur alumnus and the leader of the Atmospheric Science Team on Nasa?s Mars Exploration Rovers Mission, told The Telegraph.

?This is the first time ever that a sundial has been sited on another planet, and it is inscribed with a symbolic motto: ?Two Worlds, One Sun?,? he added.

Arabic, Braille, Chinese, Danish, English, French, German, Greek, Hawaiian, Hebrew, Italian, Inuk-Tituk, Japanese, Korean, Lingala, Malay-Indonesian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish and Thai are the other languages that adorn the surface of the plaques on which are included ancient Sumerian and Mayan, in whose culture Mars figured prominently.

?These languages are collectively spoken by three-fourths of the world,? said Ghosh, explaining the rationale behind the selection process. ?But what?s better is that India is the only Asian country that has been represented by two languages.?

In what Ghosh considers an extension of the SETI (search for extra-terrestrial intelligence) project, a ?letter, to whom it may concern? and drawings fill the tablets.

The side panels of the plaques read: ?People launched this spacecraft from Earth in our Year 2003. It arrived on Mars in 2004. We built its instruments to study the Martian environment and look for signs of life. We used this post and these patterns to adjust our cameras and as the sundial to reckon the passage of time. The drawings and words represent the people of earth. We sent this craft in peace, to learn about Mars? past and about our future. To those who visit here, we wish a safe journey and the joy of discovery.?

Artist Lomberg combined stick figures suggested by children with other space-related motifs to create a series to capture the message of the text that future Martian explorers might seek out or find by good fortune, Ghosh said.