1 00:00:01,360 --> 00:00:04,320 So many of you have probably seen the movie "The Martian." 2 00:00:05,430 --> 00:00:08,631 But for those of you who did not, it's a movie about an astronaut 3 00:00:09,232 --> 00:00:13,178 who is stranded on Mars and his efforts to stay alive 4 00:00:13,790 --> 00:00:17,556 until the Earth can send a rescue mission to bring him back to Earth. 5 00:00:19,447 --> 00:00:24,224 Gladly, they do re-establish communication with the character, astronaut Watney, 6 00:00:24,589 --> 00:00:30,228 at some point, so that he's not as alone on Mars until he can be rescued. 7 00:00:31,194 --> 00:00:33,683 So while you're watching the movie, and even if you haven't, 8 00:00:34,030 --> 00:00:36,671 when you think about Mars, you're probably thinking about 9 00:00:37,100 --> 00:00:40,094 how far away it is and how distant. 10 00:00:40,581 --> 00:00:42,859 And, what might not have occurred to you is, 11 00:00:43,289 --> 00:00:46,446 what are the logistics really like of working on another planet? 12 00:00:46,919 --> 00:00:48,937 Of living on two planets when 13 00:00:49,203 --> 00:00:54,279 there are people on the Earth and there are rovers or people on Mars? 14 00:00:54,719 --> 00:00:59,558 So think about when you have friends, families and co-workers in California, 15 00:00:59,900 --> 00:01:02,071 on the West Coast or in other parts of the world. 16 00:01:02,673 --> 00:01:04,896 When you're trying to communicate with them, one of the things 17 00:01:05,163 --> 00:01:06,517 you probably first think about is -- 18 00:01:06,917 --> 00:01:09,317 Wait, what time is it in California? 19 00:01:09,660 --> 00:01:11,880 Will I wake them up? Is it okay to call? 20 00:01:12,482 --> 00:01:15,156 So even if you're interacting with colleagues who are in Europe, 21 00:01:15,728 --> 00:01:17,648 you're immediately thinking about, 22 00:01:18,031 --> 00:01:21,312 what does it take to coordinate communication 23 00:01:21,734 --> 00:01:24,391 when people are far away? 24 00:01:25,424 --> 00:01:30,281 So we don't have people on Mars right now, but we do have rovers. 25 00:01:30,960 --> 00:01:35,332 And actually right now, on Curiosity, it is 6:10 in the morning. 26 00:01:35,912 --> 00:01:38,309 So, 6:10 in the morning on Mars. 27 00:01:39,449 --> 00:01:42,146 We have four rovers on Mars. 28 00:01:42,779 --> 00:01:45,656 The United States has put four rovers on Mars since the mid-1990s, 29 00:01:46,439 --> 00:01:48,789 and I have been privileged enough to work on three of them. 30 00:01:49,323 --> 00:01:52,345 So, I am a spacecraft engineer, a spacecraft operations engineer, 31 00:01:53,600 --> 00:01:57,614 at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Los Angeles, California. 32 00:01:59,058 --> 00:02:02,320 And these rovers are our robotic emissaries. 33 00:02:03,266 --> 00:02:08,794 So, they are our eyes and our ears and they see the planet for us 34 00:02:09,553 --> 00:02:11,510 until we can send people. 35 00:02:11,854 --> 00:02:16,175 So we learn how to operate on other planets through these rovers. 36 00:02:16,793 --> 00:02:20,744 So before we send people, we send robots. 37 00:02:21,829 --> 00:02:25,411 So the reason there's a time difference on Mars right now, 38 00:02:25,756 --> 00:02:27,166 from the time that we're at 39 00:02:27,560 --> 00:02:30,613 is because the Martian day is longer than the Earth day. 40 00:02:31,522 --> 00:02:34,257 Our Earth day is 24 hours because 41 00:02:34,438 --> 00:02:37,160 that's how long it takes the Earth to rotate, 42 00:02:37,405 --> 00:02:39,154 how long it takes to go around once. 43 00:02:39,522 --> 00:02:41,434 So our day is 24 hours. 44 00:02:41,907 --> 00:02:47,785 It takes Mars 24 hours and approximately 40 minutes to rotate once. 45 00:02:48,714 --> 00:02:54,677 So that means that the Martian day is 40 minutes longer than the Earth day. 46 00:02:55,570 --> 00:03:00,061 So teams of people who are operating the rovers on Mars, like this one, 47 00:03:00,576 --> 00:03:05,931 what we are doing is we are living on Earth, but working on Mars. 48 00:03:06,303 --> 00:03:10,963 So we have to think as if we are actually on Mars with the rover. 49 00:03:12,029 --> 00:03:15,305 Our job, the job of this team, of which I'm a part of 50 00:03:16,058 --> 00:03:21,010 is to send commands to the rover to tell it what to do the next day. 51 00:03:21,527 --> 00:03:25,042 To tell it to drive or drill or tell her whatever she's supposed to do. 52 00:03:26,143 --> 00:03:29,848 So while she's sleeping -- and the rover does sleep at night 53 00:03:30,251 --> 00:03:32,370 because she needs to re-charge her batteries 54 00:03:32,704 --> 00:03:36,183 and she needs to weather the cold Martian night. 55 00:03:36,611 --> 00:03:38,014 And so she sleeps. 56 00:03:38,411 --> 00:03:42,564 So while she sleeps, we work on her program for the next day. 57 00:03:42,989 --> 00:03:45,694 So I work the Martian night shift. 58 00:03:47,668 --> 00:03:54,147 So in order to come to work on the Earth at the same time every day on Mars -- 59 00:03:54,537 --> 00:03:56,613 like, let's say I need to be at work at 5:00 pm, 60 00:03:57,002 --> 00:04:01,630 this team needs to be at work at 5:00 pm Mars time every day, 61 00:04:02,382 --> 00:04:09,473 then we have to come to work on the Earth 40 minutes later every day, 62 00:04:11,292 --> 00:04:12,887 in order to stay in sync with Mars. 63 00:04:13,138 --> 00:04:15,511 That's like moving a time zone every day. 64 00:04:15,829 --> 00:04:20,071 So one day you come in at 8:00, the next day 40 minutes later at 8:40, 65 00:04:21,188 --> 00:04:24,456 the next day 40 minutes later at 9:20, 66 00:04:24,803 --> 00:04:26,051 the next day at 10:00, 67 00:04:26,342 --> 00:04:29,008 so you keep moving 40 minutes every day, 68 00:04:29,538 --> 00:04:31,808 until soon you're coming to work in the middle of the night -- 69 00:04:32,606 --> 00:04:34,370 the middle of the Earth night. 70 00:04:34,859 --> 00:04:37,351 Right? So you can imagine how confusing that is. 71 00:04:38,051 --> 00:04:40,016 Hence, the Mars watch. 72 00:04:40,674 --> 00:04:42,395 This watch has been mechanically -- 73 00:04:42,916 --> 00:04:46,744 the weights have been mechanically adjusted so that it runs more slowly. 74 00:04:46,984 --> 00:04:48,862 RIght? And we didn't start out -- 75 00:04:49,146 --> 00:04:51,239 I got this watch in 2004 76 00:04:51,239 --> 00:04:54,139 when Spirit and Opportunity, were the rovers back then, 77 00:04:54,552 --> 00:04:56,388 we didn't start out thinking 78 00:04:56,663 --> 00:04:58,699 that we were going to need Mars watches. 79 00:04:59,050 --> 00:05:02,714 Right? We thought, okay, we'll just have the time on our computers 80 00:05:03,635 --> 00:05:06,616 and on the mission control screens and that would be enough. 81 00:05:07,181 --> 00:05:08,417 Yeah, not so much. 82 00:05:08,723 --> 00:05:11,192 Because we weren't just working on Mars time, 83 00:05:11,471 --> 00:05:14,090 we were actually living on Mars time. 84 00:05:14,552 --> 00:05:18,251 And we got just instantaneously confused about what time it was. 85 00:05:18,769 --> 00:05:23,669 So you really needed something on your wrist to tell you: 86 00:05:23,669 --> 00:05:26,349 What time is it on the Earth, What time is it on Mars? 87 00:05:26,529 --> 00:05:31,689 And it wasn't just the time on Mars that was confusing, 88 00:05:32,295 --> 00:05:36,516 we also needed to be able to talk to each other about it. 89 00:05:37,652 --> 00:05:42,622 So a "sol" is a Martian day -- again, 24 hours and 40 minutes. 90 00:05:43,321 --> 00:05:46,025 So when we're talking about something that's happening on the earth, 91 00:05:46,428 --> 00:05:48,037 we will say, today. 92 00:05:48,992 --> 00:05:51,482 So, for Mars, we say, "tosol." 93 00:05:54,084 --> 00:05:58,279 Yesterday became 'yestersol' for Mars. 94 00:05:59,117 --> 00:06:03,058 Again, we didn't start out thinking, "oh let's invent a language." 95 00:06:03,644 --> 00:06:04,947 It was just very confusing. 96 00:06:05,263 --> 00:06:07,022 I remember someone walked up to me and said, 97 00:06:07,265 --> 00:06:10,080 "I would like to do this activity on the vehicle tomorrow, on the rover." 98 00:06:10,445 --> 00:06:16,441 And I said, "tomorrow, tomorrow, or Mars tomorrow?" Right? 99 00:06:16,721 --> 00:06:21,327 We started this terminology because we needed a way to talk to each other. 100 00:06:22,707 --> 00:06:26,558 Tomorrow became "nextersol" or "solorrow" 101 00:06:27,885 --> 00:06:30,552 because people had different preferences for the words they use. 102 00:06:30,966 --> 00:06:34,590 Some of you might say soda and some of you might say pop. 103 00:06:35,061 --> 00:06:38,545 So we have people who say nextersol or solorrow. 104 00:06:38,969 --> 00:06:43,061 And then something that I noticed after a few years of working on these missions, 105 00:06:43,463 --> 00:06:48,086 was that the people who work on the rovers, we say "tosol." 106 00:06:48,725 --> 00:06:51,806 The people who work on the landed missions that don't rove around, 107 00:06:52,180 --> 00:06:54,222 they say "tosol." [Different vowel sound] 108 00:06:54,514 --> 00:06:58,954 So I could actually tell what mission you worked on from your Martian accent. 109 00:06:59,539 --> 00:07:01,445 [Laughter] 110 00:07:02,419 --> 00:07:05,687 So we have the watches and the language and you're detecting a theme here, right?. 111 00:07:06,041 --> 00:07:08,064 So that we don't get confused. 112 00:07:08,939 --> 00:07:12,140 But even the Earth daylight could confuse us. 113 00:07:12,739 --> 00:07:14,947 If you think that right now, you've come to work 114 00:07:15,271 --> 00:07:19,400 and it's the middle of the Martian night and there's light streaming in 115 00:07:19,728 --> 00:07:22,452 from the windows, that's confusing as well. 116 00:07:23,377 --> 00:07:25,743 So you can see from this image of the control room 117 00:07:26,284 --> 00:07:27,983 that all of the blinds are down. 118 00:07:28,373 --> 00:07:30,796 So that there's no light to distract us. 119 00:07:31,185 --> 00:07:35,228 The blinds went down all over the building about a week before landing 120 00:07:35,532 --> 00:07:38,528 and they didn't go up until we went off Mars time. 121 00:07:39,027 --> 00:07:42,114 So this also works for the house, for at home. 122 00:07:42,471 --> 00:07:44,865 So I've been on Mars time three times, and my husband is like, okay, 123 00:07:45,313 --> 00:07:47,485 we're getting ready for Mars time. 124 00:07:47,812 --> 00:07:52,605 And so he'll put foil all over the windows and dark curtains and shades 125 00:07:52,979 --> 00:07:56,201 because it also affects your families. 126 00:07:56,635 --> 00:08:00,871 And so here I was living in kind of his darkened environment but so was he, 127 00:08:01,921 --> 00:08:03,277 and he'd gotten used to it, 128 00:08:03,610 --> 00:08:06,602 but then I would get these plaintive emails from him when he was at work. 129 00:08:07,191 --> 00:08:13,487 Should I come home? Are you awake? What time is it on Mars? 130 00:08:13,887 --> 00:08:16,278 And I decided, okay, so he needs a Mars watch. 131 00:08:17,009 --> 00:08:18,367 [Laughter] 132 00:08:18,666 --> 00:08:22,428 But of course, it's 2016, so there's an app for that. 133 00:08:23,549 --> 00:08:27,925 So now instead of the watches, we can also use our phones. 134 00:08:28,983 --> 00:08:32,774 But the impact on families was just across the board, 135 00:08:33,056 --> 00:08:36,298 it wasn't just those of us who were working on the rovers 136 00:08:36,782 --> 00:08:38,896 but our families as well. 137 00:08:39,225 --> 00:08:41,200 This is David O, one of our flight directors, 138 00:08:41,579 --> 00:08:45,104 and he's at the beach in Los Angeles with his family at 1:00 in the morning. 139 00:08:47,346 --> 00:08:50,256 So because we landed in August 140 00:08:50,618 --> 00:08:54,519 and his kids didn't have to go back to school until September, 141 00:08:54,964 --> 00:08:58,899 they actually went on to Mars time with him for one month. 142 00:08:59,640 --> 00:09:03,689 They got up 40 minutes later every day 143 00:09:04,433 --> 00:09:06,627 and they were on dad's work schedule. 144 00:09:06,911 --> 00:09:10,388 So they lived on Mars time for a month and had these great adventures, 145 00:09:10,806 --> 00:09:12,577 like going bowling in the middle of the night 146 00:09:12,977 --> 00:09:14,729 or going to the beach. 147 00:09:15,100 --> 00:09:17,257 And one of the things that we all discovered 148 00:09:17,722 --> 00:09:20,952 is you can get anywhere in Los Angeles 149 00:09:21,663 --> 00:09:25,215 at 3:00 in the morning when there's no traffic. 150 00:09:26,911 --> 00:09:28,664 So we would get off work and -- 151 00:09:28,959 --> 00:09:30,830 you know we didn't want to go home and bother our families -- 152 00:09:31,246 --> 00:09:32,234 and we were hungry, 153 00:09:32,471 --> 00:09:34,652 so instead of going locally to eat something, we'd go, 154 00:09:34,892 --> 00:09:37,453 "wait, there's this great all-night deli in Long Beach, 155 00:09:37,840 --> 00:09:40,095 and we can get there in 10 minutes." 156 00:09:40,439 --> 00:09:42,863 It was like the 60s, no traffic. 157 00:09:43,196 --> 00:09:46,063 So we would drive down there, and the restaurant owners would go, 158 00:09:46,742 --> 00:09:48,805 Who are you people? 159 00:09:49,669 --> 00:09:53,394 And why are you at my restaurant at 3:00 in the morning? 160 00:09:54,461 --> 00:09:58,284 So they came to realize that there were these packs of Martians, 161 00:09:59,744 --> 00:10:04,182 roaming the LA freeways, in the middle of the night, 162 00:10:06,006 --> 00:10:07,960 in the middle of the Earth night. 163 00:10:08,423 --> 00:10:12,264 And we did actually start calling ourselves Martians. 164 00:10:13,376 --> 00:10:17,254 So those of us who were on Mars time would refer to ourselves as Martians 165 00:10:18,178 --> 00:10:20,934 and everyone else as Earthlings. 166 00:10:22,788 --> 00:10:27,548 And that's because when you're moving a time-zone every day, 167 00:10:29,655 --> 00:10:33,536 you start to really feel separated from everyone else. 168 00:10:34,285 --> 00:10:37,730 You're literally in your own world. 169 00:10:39,085 --> 00:10:45,854 So I have this button on that says, "I survived Mars time. Sol 0-90" 170 00:10:46,078 --> 00:10:48,353 and there's a picture of it up on the screen. 171 00:10:48,847 --> 00:10:53,462 So the reason we got these buttons is because we work on Mars time 172 00:10:54,321 --> 00:10:59,348 in order to be as efficient as possible with the rover on Mars, 173 00:10:59,598 --> 00:11:01,763 to make the best use of our time. 174 00:11:02,032 --> 00:11:05,578 But we don't stay on Mars time for more than three to four months. 175 00:11:05,928 --> 00:11:10,124 Eventually, we'll move to a modified Mars time, which is what we're working now. 176 00:11:10,535 --> 00:11:14,937 And that's because it's hard on your bodies, it's hard on your families. 177 00:11:15,312 --> 00:11:19,691 In fact, there were sleep researchers who actually were studying us 178 00:11:20,264 --> 00:11:25,113 because it was so unusual for humans to try to extend their day. 179 00:11:25,590 --> 00:11:29,455 And they had about 30 of us that they would do sleep deprivation experiments on. 180 00:11:30,334 --> 00:11:33,637 So I would come in and take the test and I fell asleep in each one, 181 00:11:34,049 --> 00:11:37,705 and that was because again, this was so, eventually 182 00:11:38,063 --> 00:11:40,655 it becomes hard on your body. 183 00:11:40,923 --> 00:11:44,359 Even though it was a blast. Right? 184 00:11:44,674 --> 00:11:48,280 It was a huge bonding experience with the other members on the team, 185 00:11:48,587 --> 00:11:51,351 but it is difficult to sustain. 186 00:11:52,529 --> 00:11:58,353 So these rover missions are our first steps out into the solar system. 187 00:11:58,753 --> 00:12:03,473 We are learning how to live on more than one planet. 188 00:12:03,899 --> 00:12:08,660 We are changing our perspective to become multi-planetary. 189 00:12:09,141 --> 00:12:11,830 So the next time you see a Star Wars movie, 190 00:12:12,133 --> 00:12:15,297 and there are people going from the Dagobah system to Tatooine, 191 00:12:15,675 --> 00:12:20,774 think about what it really means to have people spread out so far. 192 00:12:21,344 --> 00:12:24,255 What it means in terms of the distances between them, 193 00:12:24,652 --> 00:12:27,968 how they will start to feel separate from each other, 194 00:12:28,215 --> 00:12:31,852 and just the logistics of the time. 195 00:12:32,603 --> 00:12:36,228 We have not sent people to Mars yet, but we hope to. 196 00:12:36,716 --> 00:12:40,285 And between companies like SpaceX and NASA 197 00:12:40,542 --> 00:12:43,808 and all of the international space agencies of the world, 198 00:12:44,169 --> 00:12:47,325 we hope to do that in the next few decades. 199 00:12:47,711 --> 00:12:53,696 So soon we will have people on Mars and we truly will be multi-planetary. 200 00:12:54,245 --> 00:12:57,621 And the young boy or the young girl who are the people 201 00:12:57,989 --> 00:13:03,563 who will be going to Mars could be in this audience or listening today. 202 00:13:04,595 --> 00:13:09,586 I have wanted to work at JPL on these missions since I was 14-years-old 203 00:13:10,044 --> 00:13:12,160 and I am privileged to be a part of it. 204 00:13:12,461 --> 00:13:15,853 And this is a remarkable time in the space program, 205 00:13:16,188 --> 00:13:19,266 and we are all in this journey together. 206 00:13:19,563 --> 00:13:24,227 So the next time you think you don't have enough time in your day, 207 00:13:24,810 --> 00:13:28,988 just remember, it's all a matter of your Earthly perspective. 208 00:13:29,320 --> 00:13:31,450 Thank you.