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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

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with the character,
astronaut Watney, at some point

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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,
or even if you haven't,

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when you think about Mars,

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you're probably thinking about
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

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when 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

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

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When you're trying
to communicate with them,

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one of the things
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 OK 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.

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So, 6:10 in the morning on Mars.

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We have four rovers on Mars.

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The United States has put four rovers
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 our 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,

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because that's how long it takes
the Earth to rotate,

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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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this is one of our teams that I'm part of,

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I usually sit at this table over here --

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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 recharge 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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(Laughter)

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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 p.m.,

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this team needs to be at work
at 5:00 p.m. 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,

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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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(Laughter)

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(Applause)

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I think they're going to zoom in.

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(Applause)

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This weights in this watch
have been mechanically adjusted

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so that it runs more slowly.

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Right? And we didn't start out --

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I got this watch in 2004

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when Spirit and Opportunity,
the rovers back then.

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We didn't start out thinking

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that we were going to need Mars watches.

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Right? We thought, OK,
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:

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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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(Laughter)

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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 somebody
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?"

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

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(Laughter)

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Tomorrow became "nextersol" or "solorrow."

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Because people have 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
landed missions that don't rove around,

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they say "tosoul."

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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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(Applause)

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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

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and there's light streaming in
from the windows

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that's going to be 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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I've been on Mars time three times,
and my husband is like,

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OK, 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
this 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?

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What time is it on Mars?

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And I decided, OK,
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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(Laughter)

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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 Oh,
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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(Laughter)

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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 you can get anywhere in Los Angeles

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

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(Laughter)

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So we would get off work,

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and we didn't want to go home
and bother our families,

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and we were hungry, so instead of
going locally to eat something,

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we'd go, "Wait, there's this great
all-night deli in Long Beach,

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and we can get there in 10 minutes!"

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So we would drive down --
it was like the 60s, no traffic.

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We would drive down there,
and the restaurant owners would go,

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"Who are you people?

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And why are you at my restaurant
at 3:00 in the morning?"

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So they came to realize
that there were these packs of Martians --

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(Laughter)

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roaming the LA freeways,
in the middle of the night --

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in the middle of the Earth night.

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And we did actually
start calling ourselves Martians.

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So those of us who were on Mars time
would refer to ourselves as Martians,

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and everyone else as Earthlings.

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(Laughter)

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And that's because when you're moving
a time-zone every day,

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you start to really feel separated
from everyone else.

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You're literally in your own world.

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So I have this button on that says,
"I survived Mars time. Sol 0-90."

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And there's a picture of it
up on the screen.

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So the reason we got these buttons
is because we work on Mars time

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in order to be as efficient as possible
with the rover on Mars,

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to make the best use of our time.

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But we don't stay on Mars time
for more than three to four months.

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Eventually, we'll move to a modified Mars
time, which is what we're working now.

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And that's because it's hard on
your bodies, it's hard on your families.

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In fact, there were sleep researchers
who actually were studying us

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because it was so unusual for humans
to try to extend their day.

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And so, I wore an [actigraph].

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And they had about 30 of us

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that they would do
sleep deprivation experiments on.

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So I would come in and take the test
and I fell asleep in each one.

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And that was because, again,
this eventually becomes hard on your body.

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Even though it was a blast.

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It was a huge bonding experience
with the other members on the team,

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but it is difficult to sustain.

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So these rover missions are our first
steps out into the solar system.

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We are learning how to live
on more than one planet.

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We are changing our perspective
to become multi-planetary.

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So the next time you see
a Star Wars movie,

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and there are people going
from the Dagobah system to Tatooine,

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think about what it really means to have
people spread out so far.

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What it means in terms of
the distances between them,

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how they will start to feel
separate from each other

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and just the logistics of the time.

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We have not sent people
to Mars yet, but we hope to.

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00:13:13,758 --> 00:13:17,597
And between companies like SpaceX and NASA

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00:13:17,621 --> 00:13:21,110
and all of the international
space agencies of the world,

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00:13:21,134 --> 00:13:24,901
we hope to do that
in the next few decades.

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So soon we will have people on Mars,
and we truly will be multi-planetary.

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And the young boy or the young girl

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who will be going to Mars could be
in this audience or listening today.

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I have wanted to work at JPL
on these missions since I was 14 years old

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and I am privileged to be a part of it.

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00:13:49,318 --> 00:13:53,372
And this is a remarkable time
in the space program,

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and we are all in this journey together.

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So the next time you think
you don't have enough time in your day,

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just remember, it's all a matter
of your Earthly perspective.

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Thank you.

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00:14:07,806 --> 00:14:11,920
(Applause)