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So many of you have probably seen
the movie "The Martian."

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But for those of you who did not,
it's a movie about an astronaut

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who is stranded on Mars
and his efforts to stay alive

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until the Earth can send a rescue mission
to bring him back to Earth.

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Gladly, they do re-establish communication
with the character, astronaut Watney,

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at some point, so that he's not as alone
on Mars until he can be rescued.

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So while you're watching the movie,
and even if you haven't,

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when you think about Mars,
you're probably thinking about

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how far away it is and how distant.

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And, what might not
have occurred to you is,

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what are the logistics really like
of working on another planet?

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Of living on two planets when

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there are people on the Earth and
there are rovers or people on Mars?

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So think about when you have friends,
families and co-workers in California,

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on the West Coast
or in other parts of the world.

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When you're trying to communicate
with them, one of the things

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you probably first think about is --

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Wait, what time is it in California?

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Will I wake them up? Is it okay to call?

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So even if you're interacting
with colleagues who are in Europe,

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you're immediately thinking about,

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what does it take to coordinate
communication when people are far away?

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So we don't have people on Mars right now,
but we do have rovers.

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And actually right now, on Curiosity,
it is 6:10 in the morning on Mars.

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We have four rovers on Mars.
The United States has put four rovers

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on Mars since the mid-1990s,

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and I have been privileged enough
to work on three of them.

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So, I am a spacecraft engineer,
a spacecraft operations engineer,

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at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory
in Los Angeles, California.

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And these rovers are robotic emissaries.

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So, they are our eyes and our ears
and they see the planet for us

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until we can send people.

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So we learn how to operate
on other planets through these rovers.

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So before we send people, we send robots.

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So the reason there's a time difference
on Mars right now,

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from the time that we're at

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is because the Martian day
is longer than the Earth day.

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Our Earth day is 24 hours because that's

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how long it takes the Earth to rotate,
how long it takes to go around once.

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So our day is 24 hours.

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It takes Mars 24 hours and
approximately 40 minutes to rotate once.

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So that means that the Martian day
is 40 minutes longer than the Earth day.

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So teams of people who are operating
the rovers on Mars, like this one,

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what we are doing is we are
living on Earth, but working on Mars.

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So we have to think as if we are actually
on Mars with the Rover.

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Our job, the job of this team,
of which I'm a part of

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is to send commands to the rover
to tell it what to do the next day.

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To tell it to drive or drill or
tell her whatever she's supposed to do.

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So while she's sleeping --
and the rover does sleep at night

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because she needs
to re-charge her batteries

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and she needs to weather
the cold Martian night.

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And so she sleeps.

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So while she sleeps, we work
on her program for the next day.

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So I work the Martian night shift.

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So in order to come to work on the Earth
at the same time every day on Mars --

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like, let's say I need to be
at work at 5:00 pm,

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this team needs to be at work
at 5:00 pm Mars time every day,

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then we have to come to work
on the Earth 40 minutes later every day,

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in order to stay in sync with Mars.

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That's like moving a time zone every day.

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So one day you come in at 8:00,
the next day 40 minutes later at 8:40,

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the next day 40 minutes later at 9:20,
the next day at 10:00,

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so you keep moving 40 minutes every day,


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until soon you're coming to work
in the middle of the night --

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the middle of the Earth night.

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Right? So you can imagine
how confusing that is.

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Hence, the Mars watch.

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This watch has been mechanically --

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the weights have been mechanically
adjusted so that it runs more slowly.

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When I got this watch in 2004

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with Spirit and Opportunity,
the rovers back then,

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we didn't start out thinking
that we were going to need Mars watches.

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Right? We thought, okay,
we'll just have the time on our computers

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and on the mission control screens
and that would be enough.

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Yeah, not so much.

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Because we weren't just
working on Mars time,

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we were actually living on Mars time.

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And we got just instantaneously confused
about what time it was.

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So you really needed something
on your wrist to tell you, alright,

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what time is it on the Earth,
what time is it on Mars.

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And it wasn't just the time on Mars
that was confusing,

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we also needed to be able
to talk to each other about it.

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So a "sol" is a Martian day --
again, 24 hours and 40 minutes.

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So when we're talking about something
that's happening on the earth,

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we will say, today.

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So, for Mars, we say, "tosol."

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Yesterday became 'yestersol' for Mars.

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Again, we didn't start out thinking,
"oh let's invent a language."

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It was just very confusing.

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I remember someone
walked up to me and said,

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"I would like to do this activity
on the vehicle tomorrow, on the rover."

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And I said, "tomorrow, tomorrow,
or Mars tomorrow?" Right?

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We started this terminology because
we needed a way to talk to each other.

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Tomorrow became "nextersol" or "solorrow"

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because people had different preferences
for the words they use.

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Some of you might say soda
and some of you might say pop.

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So we have people who say
nextersol or solorrow.

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And then something that I noticed after
a few years of working on these missions,

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was that the people who work
on the rovers, we say "tosol."

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The people who work on the
landing missions that don't rove around,

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they say "tosol."
[Different vowel sound]

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So I could actually tell what mission
you worked on from your Martian accent.

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[Laughter]

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So we have the watches and the language
and you're detecting a theme here, right?.

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So that we don't get confused.

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But even the Earth daylight
could confuse us.

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If you think that right now,
you've come to work

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and it's the middle of the Martian night
and there's light streaming in

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from the windows,
that's confusing as well.

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So you can see from
this image of the control room

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that all of the blinds are down.

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So that there's no light to distract us.

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The blinds went down all over the building
about a week before landing

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and they didn't go up
until we went off Mars time.

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So this also works
for the house, for at home.

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So I've been on Mars time three times,
and my husband is like, okay,

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we're getting ready for Mars time.

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And so he'll put foil all over the windows
and dark curtains and shades

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because it also affects your families.

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And so here I was living in kind of 
his darkened environment but so was he,

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and he'd gotten used to it,

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but then I would get these plaintive
emails from him when he was at work.

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Should I come home? Are you awake?
What time is it on Mars?

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And I decided, okay,
so he needs a Mars watch.

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[Laughter]

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But of course, it's 2016,
so there's an app for that.

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So now instead of the watches,
we can also use our phones.

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But the impact on families
was just across the board,

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it wasn't just those of us
who were working on the rovers

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but our families as well.

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This is David O,
one of our flight directors,

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and he's at the beach in Los Angeles
with his family at 1:00 in the morning.

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So because we landed in August

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and his kids didn't have to
go back to school until September,

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they actually went on to Mars time
with him for one month.

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They got up 40 minutes later every day

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and they were on dad's work schedule.

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So they lived on Mars time for a month
and had these great adventures,

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like going bowling
in the middle of the night

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or going to the beach.

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And one of the things
that we all discovered

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is that you can get
anywhere in Los Angeles

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at 3:00 in the morning
when there's no traffic.