In the present work we derive analytic expressions to describe adsorption kinetics of beta atomic molecules on rectangular two-dimensional arrays. Considering the kinetic process as a Markovian chain, linear molecules are placed at random onto a two-dimensional lattice space, but adsorbing only those that do not overlap previously adsorbed linear molecules. The probability of each microstate, the average number of attempts until the jamming state and the jamming limit are calculated. For comparison purposes, the kinetics of the adsorption, and the coverage at the jamming limit are also evaluated by using computer simulations on lattices of different size. (C) 2004 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.