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Jordan Evans, an operations manager on the Mars mission, holds a replica of a Mars Curiosity wheel in his office at JPL. Evans was recently on a "Mars Day" shift at JPL where his office was kept dark to simulate living on Mars time, which is about 40 minutes longer than a day on Earth. (Raul Roa / Staff Photographer / August 16, 2012) |
Monitoring the NASA rover Curiosity as it settles in on Mars is easy for Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientists. The hard part is living on Mars time.
A day on Mars, called a sol, is about 40 minutes longer than a day on Earth. The orbiters that transmit data from Curiosity back to Earth do it at around the same time each Martian day, requiring researchers to adjust their Earth schedules. And while Curiosity packs a nuclear-powered generator, it sleeps at night to save energy, and workers want to take advantage of its operational time.
Jordan Evans, an operations manager on the mission, was at JPL when the rover landed safely Aug. 5 at 10:32 p.m. — the middle of the afternoon on the Red Planet's Gale Crater.
He used a cot in his office to rest for the first couple of days. He switched back to California time Aug. 10, but will take the leap again next month as Curiosity conducts its first geological dig.
“It took a solid two days to get the fog out from in between my ears,” he said. “When I wasn't working, I never slept for more than three hours [in a row].”
Evans survived with the help of caffeine. By sol three, he said, he and his co-workers had downed about 100 cups of coffee. He has placed thick black curtains on his office windows when he's working an odd schedule so he has “no sense of whether it's day or night at Earth.”
During Curiosity's first week on Mars, Evans said, he wanted to sit around the dinner table with his wife and two children, ages 9 and 11. But his schedule was a mix of days and nights.
“It was hard for my kids to keep track of when I was going to work and when it was OK to engage me,” he said.
Scientists and engineers are working on Mars time for the first 90 days of the mission. Schedules at JPL will become even messier in the coming weeks as Curiosity ends its quiet post-landing period and begins to explore the planet.
Adjusting to Mars time is tough for everyone involved, Evans said, but the prospect of discovering something new on the Red Planet each sol keeps the energy level high. “I haven't really heard any complaints,” he said.
On Tuesday, Caltech planetary sciences professor Bethany Ehlmann worked a shift that began around 3 a.m.
“Today was not pleasant,” she said that afternoon.
“Mars time makes you out of sync with the rest of the world,” she added. “It becomes difficult to conduct your everyday life.”
A veteran of the Spirit and Opportunity missions to Mars, Ehlmann is taking time off from her university work this term so she can more easily adapt to the erratic schedule.
Ehlmann said friends and family members don't call her as much as usual because they don't know when she's sleeping. When they do call, she has to consult two spreadsheets and then convert those numbers into Mars time to see if she is available for visits and events.
“You, in a sense, are like the rover,” she said. “You have to live on the rhythm of another planet.”
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