WEBVTT 00:00:13.879 --> 00:00:17.428 So many of you have probably seen the movie "The Martian." 00:00:18.066 --> 00:00:21.883 But for those of you who did not, it's a movie about an astronaut 00:00:21.907 --> 00:00:26.450 who is stranded on Mars, and his efforts to stay alive 00:00:26.474 --> 00:00:30.970 until the Earth can send a rescue mission to bring him back to Earth. 00:00:32.130 --> 00:00:35.269 Gladly, they do re-establish communication 00:00:35.293 --> 00:00:37.831 with the character, astronaut Watney, at some point 00:00:37.855 --> 00:00:43.126 so that he's not as alone on Mars until he can be rescued. 00:00:43.651 --> 00:00:46.413 So while you're watching the movie, or even if you haven't, 00:00:46.437 --> 00:00:47.985 when you think about Mars, 00:00:48.009 --> 00:00:52.809 you're probably thinking about how far away it is and how distant. NOTE Paragraph 00:00:52.833 --> 00:00:55.412 And, what might not have occurred to you is, 00:00:55.436 --> 00:00:59.333 what are the logistics really like of working on another planet -- 00:00:59.357 --> 00:01:01.603 of living on two planets 00:01:01.627 --> 00:01:07.461 when there are people on the Earth and there are rovers or people on Mars? 00:01:07.485 --> 00:01:13.073 So think about when you have friends, families and co-workers 00:01:13.097 --> 00:01:16.796 in California, on the West Coast or in other parts of the world. 00:01:16.820 --> 00:01:18.873 When you're trying to communicate with them, 00:01:18.897 --> 00:01:21.335 one of the things you probably first think about is: 00:01:21.359 --> 00:01:23.455 wait, what time is it in California? 00:01:23.479 --> 00:01:26.074 Will I wake them up? Is it OK to call? 00:01:26.478 --> 00:01:29.829 So even if you're interacting with colleagues who are in Europe, 00:01:29.853 --> 00:01:31.895 you're immediately thinking about: 00:01:31.919 --> 00:01:38.919 What does it take to coordinate communication when people are far away? 00:01:39.808 --> 00:01:45.392 So we don't have people on Mars right now, but we do have rovers. 00:01:45.716 --> 00:01:52.082 And actually right now, on Curiosity, it is 6:10 in the morning. 00:01:52.305 --> 00:01:55.076 So, 6:10 in the morning on Mars. 00:01:55.471 --> 00:01:57.472 We have four rovers on Mars. 00:01:57.496 --> 00:02:01.503 The United States has put four rovers on Mars since the mid-1990s, 00:02:01.527 --> 00:02:05.466 and I have been privileged enough to work on three of them. 00:02:05.490 --> 00:02:10.011 So, I am a spacecraft engineer, a spacecraft operations engineer, 00:02:10.035 --> 00:02:14.882 at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Los Angeles, California. 00:02:15.451 --> 00:02:19.612 And these rovers are our robotic emissaries. 00:02:19.636 --> 00:02:25.914 So, they are our eyes and our ears, and they see the planet for us 00:02:25.938 --> 00:02:27.771 until we can send people. 00:02:27.795 --> 00:02:33.088 So we learn how to operate on other planets through these rovers. 00:02:33.112 --> 00:02:37.418 So before we send people, we send robots. 00:02:37.921 --> 00:02:41.872 So the reason there's a time difference on Mars right now, 00:02:41.896 --> 00:02:44.138 from the time that we're at 00:02:44.162 --> 00:02:48.136 is because the Martian day is longer than the Earth day. 00:02:48.489 --> 00:02:51.286 Our Earth day is 24 hours, 00:02:51.310 --> 00:02:54.684 because that's how long it takes the Earth to rotate, 00:02:54.708 --> 00:02:56.709 how long it takes to go around once. 00:02:56.733 --> 00:02:58.645 So our day is 24 hours. 00:02:59.061 --> 00:03:05.881 It takes Mars 24 hours and approximately 40 minutes to rotate once. 00:03:05.905 --> 00:03:12.547 So that means that the Martian day is 40 minutes longer than the Earth day. 00:03:12.982 --> 00:03:17.844 So teams of people who are operating the rovers on Mars, like this one -- 00:03:17.868 --> 00:03:19.869 this is one of our teams that I'm part of, 00:03:19.893 --> 00:03:21.967 I usually sit at this table over here -- 00:03:21.991 --> 00:03:27.403 what we are doing is we are living on Earth, but working on Mars. 00:03:27.427 --> 00:03:32.892 So we have to think as if we are actually on Mars with the rover. 00:03:33.259 --> 00:03:36.838 Our job, the job of this team, of which I'm a part of, 00:03:36.862 --> 00:03:42.791 is to send commands to the rover to tell it what to do the next day. 00:03:42.815 --> 00:03:46.844 To tell it to drive or drill or tell her whatever she's supposed to do. 00:03:47.158 --> 00:03:51.624 So while she's sleeping -- and the rover does sleep at night 00:03:51.648 --> 00:03:54.018 because she needs to recharge her batteries 00:03:54.042 --> 00:03:57.938 and she needs to weather the cold Martian night. 00:03:57.962 --> 00:03:59.324 And so she sleeps. 00:03:59.348 --> 00:04:04.116 So while she sleeps, we work on her program for the next day. 00:04:04.462 --> 00:04:07.444 So I work the Martian night shift. 00:04:07.468 --> 00:04:09.059 (Laughter) 00:04:09.083 --> 00:04:15.711 So in order to come to work on the Earth at the same time every day on Mars -- 00:04:15.735 --> 00:04:18.139 like, let's say I need to be at work at 5:00 p.m., 00:04:18.163 --> 00:04:23.732 this team needs to be at work at 5:00 p.m. Mars time every day, 00:04:23.756 --> 00:04:30.756 then we have to come to work on the Earth 40 minutes later every day, 00:04:31.747 --> 00:04:33.926 in order to stay in sync with Mars. 00:04:33.950 --> 00:04:36.902 That's like moving a time zone every day. 00:04:36.926 --> 00:04:42.381 So one day you come in at 8:00, the next day 40 minutes later at 8:40, 00:04:42.405 --> 00:04:45.674 the next day 40 minutes later at 9:20, 00:04:45.698 --> 00:04:47.287 the next day at 10:00. 00:04:47.311 --> 00:04:50.889 So you keep moving 40 minutes every day, 00:04:50.913 --> 00:04:53.902 until soon you're coming to work in the middle of the night -- 00:04:53.926 --> 00:04:55.743 the middle of the Earth night. 00:04:55.767 --> 00:04:59.385 Right? So you can imagine how confusing that is. 00:04:59.409 --> 00:05:01.561 Hence, the Mars watch. 00:05:01.585 --> 00:05:03.409 (Laughter) 00:05:03.433 --> 00:05:04.448 (Applause) 00:05:04.472 --> 00:05:06.102 I think they're going to zoom in. 00:05:06.126 --> 00:05:09.386 (Applause) 00:05:09.410 --> 00:05:13.798 This weights in this watch have been mechanically adjusted 00:05:13.822 --> 00:05:16.350 so that it runs more slowly. 00:05:16.374 --> 00:05:18.263 Right? And we didn't start out -- 00:05:18.287 --> 00:05:20.513 I got this watch in 2004 00:05:20.537 --> 00:05:23.841 when Spirit and Opportunity, the rovers back then. 00:05:23.865 --> 00:05:25.471 We didn't start out thinking 00:05:25.495 --> 00:05:27.926 that we were going to need Mars watches. 00:05:27.950 --> 00:05:32.381 Right? We thought, OK, we'll just have the time on our computers 00:05:32.405 --> 00:05:36.053 and on the mission control screens, and that would be enough. 00:05:36.077 --> 00:05:37.458 Yeah, not so much. 00:05:37.482 --> 00:05:40.331 Because we weren't just working on Mars time, 00:05:40.355 --> 00:05:43.514 we were actually living on Mars time. 00:05:43.538 --> 00:05:47.821 And we got just instantaneously confused about what time it was. 00:05:47.845 --> 00:05:51.638 So you really needed something on your wrist to tell you: 00:05:51.662 --> 00:05:54.953 What time is it on the Earth? What time is it on Mars? 00:05:55.382 --> 00:06:01.276 And it wasn't just the time on Mars that was confusing; 00:06:01.300 --> 00:06:06.069 we also needed to be able to talk to each other about it. 00:06:06.612 --> 00:06:12.239 So a "sol" is a Martian day -- again, 24 hours and 40 minutes. 00:06:12.263 --> 00:06:15.458 So when we're talking about something that's happening on the Earth, 00:06:15.482 --> 00:06:16.791 we will say, today. 00:06:17.503 --> 00:06:20.335 So, for Mars, we say, "tosol." 00:06:20.359 --> 00:06:23.098 (Laughter) 00:06:23.267 --> 00:06:27.784 Yesterday became "yestersol" for Mars. 00:06:28.112 --> 00:06:32.619 Again, we didn't start out thinking, "Oh, let's invent a language." 00:06:32.643 --> 00:06:33.933 It was just very confusing. 00:06:33.957 --> 00:06:36.138 I remember somebody walked up to me and said, 00:06:36.162 --> 00:06:39.595 "I would like to do this activity on the vehicle tomorrow, on the rover." 00:06:39.619 --> 00:06:44.730 And I said, "Tomorrow, tomorrow, or Mars, tomorrow?" 00:06:45.262 --> 00:06:50.314 We started this terminology because we needed a way to talk to each other. 00:06:50.338 --> 00:06:51.759 (Laughter) 00:06:51.783 --> 00:06:56.059 Tomorrow became "nextersol" or "solorrow." 00:06:56.891 --> 00:07:00.506 Because people have different preferences for the words they use. 00:07:00.530 --> 00:07:04.343 Some of you might say "soda" and some of you might say "pop." 00:07:05.004 --> 00:07:08.210 So we have people who say "nextersol" or "solorrow." 00:07:08.737 --> 00:07:13.461 And then something that I noticed after a few years of working on these missions, 00:07:13.485 --> 00:07:18.137 was that the people who work on the rovers, we say "tosol." 00:07:18.601 --> 00:07:22.135 The people who work on the landed missions that don't rove around, 00:07:22.159 --> 00:07:23.631 they say "tosoul." 00:07:24.133 --> 00:07:28.852 So I could actually tell what mission you worked on from your Martian accent. 00:07:28.876 --> 00:07:30.500 (Laughter) 00:07:30.524 --> 00:07:34.196 (Applause) 00:07:34.220 --> 00:07:38.080 So we have the watches and the language, and you're detecting a theme here, right? 00:07:38.104 --> 00:07:40.100 So that we don't get confused. 00:07:40.664 --> 00:07:44.471 But even the Earth daylight could confuse us. 00:07:44.674 --> 00:07:47.253 If you think that right now, you've come to work 00:07:47.277 --> 00:07:49.372 and it's the middle of the Martian night 00:07:49.396 --> 00:07:52.694 and there's light streaming in from the windows 00:07:52.718 --> 00:07:54.866 that's going to be confusing as well. 00:07:55.326 --> 00:07:57.831 So you can see from this image of the control room 00:07:57.855 --> 00:08:00.124 that all of the blinds are down. 00:08:00.148 --> 00:08:03.151 So that there's no light to distract us. 00:08:03.175 --> 00:08:08.027 The blinds went down all over the building about a week before landing, 00:08:08.051 --> 00:08:11.318 and they didn't go up until we went off Mars time. 00:08:11.772 --> 00:08:14.953 So this also works for the house, for at home. 00:08:14.977 --> 00:08:17.750 I've been on Mars time three times, and my husband is like, 00:08:17.774 --> 00:08:19.589 OK, we're getting ready for Mars time. 00:08:19.613 --> 00:08:25.815 And so he'll put foil all over the windows and dark curtains and shades 00:08:25.839 --> 00:08:28.986 because it also affects your families. 00:08:29.010 --> 00:08:33.889 And so here I was living in kind of this darkened environment, but so was he. 00:08:34.450 --> 00:08:35.746 And he'd gotten used to it. 00:08:35.770 --> 00:08:39.412 But then I would get these plaintive emails from him when he was at work. 00:08:40.002 --> 00:08:43.294 Should I come home? Are you awake? 00:08:43.318 --> 00:08:46.448 What time is it on Mars? 00:08:46.472 --> 00:08:48.970 And I decided, OK, so he needs a Mars watch. 00:08:48.994 --> 00:08:50.529 (Laughter) 00:08:50.553 --> 00:08:54.987 But of course, it's 2016, so there's an app for that. 00:08:55.011 --> 00:08:56.289 (Laughter) 00:08:56.313 --> 00:09:00.927 So now instead of the watches, we can also use our phones. 00:09:01.345 --> 00:09:05.485 But the impact on families was just across the board; 00:09:05.509 --> 00:09:09.171 it wasn't just those of us who were working on the rovers 00:09:09.195 --> 00:09:11.409 but our families as well. 00:09:11.433 --> 00:09:13.912 This is David Oh, one of our flight directors, 00:09:13.936 --> 00:09:18.410 and he's at the beach in Los Angeles with his family at 1:00 in the morning. 00:09:18.434 --> 00:09:19.857 (Laughter) 00:09:19.881 --> 00:09:22.861 So because we landed in August 00:09:22.885 --> 00:09:27.331 and his kids didn't have to go back to school until September, 00:09:27.355 --> 00:09:32.103 they actually went on to Mars time with him for one month. 00:09:32.127 --> 00:09:36.896 They got up 40 minutes later every day. 00:09:36.920 --> 00:09:39.103 And they were on dad's work schedule. 00:09:39.127 --> 00:09:43.102 So they lived on Mars time for a month and had these great adventures, 00:09:43.126 --> 00:09:45.223 like going bowling in the middle of the night 00:09:45.247 --> 00:09:46.565 or going to the beach. 00:09:46.894 --> 00:09:50.253 And one of the things that we all discovered 00:09:50.277 --> 00:09:54.265 is you can get anywhere in Los Angeles 00:09:54.289 --> 00:09:57.842 at 3:00 in the morning when there's no traffic. NOTE Paragraph 00:09:57.866 --> 00:09:59.340 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:09:59.364 --> 00:10:01.156 So we would get off work, 00:10:01.180 --> 00:10:04.295 and we didn't want to go home and bother our families, 00:10:04.319 --> 00:10:07.509 and we were hungry, so instead of going locally to eat something, 00:10:07.533 --> 00:10:11.097 we'd go, "Wait, there's this great all-night deli in Long Beach, 00:10:11.121 --> 00:10:13.363 and we can get there in 10 minutes!" 00:10:13.387 --> 00:10:16.108 So we would drive down -- it was like the 60s, no traffic. 00:10:16.132 --> 00:10:19.887 We would drive down there, and the restaurant owners would go, 00:10:19.911 --> 00:10:22.742 "Who are you people? 00:10:22.766 --> 00:10:26.939 And why are you at my restaurant at 3:00 in the morning?" 00:10:27.303 --> 00:10:31.692 So they came to realize that there were these packs of Martians -- 00:10:31.716 --> 00:10:32.982 (Laughter) 00:10:33.006 --> 00:10:37.671 roaming the LA freeways, in the middle of the night -- 00:10:38.633 --> 00:10:40.656 in the middle of the Earth night. 00:10:40.680 --> 00:10:45.477 And we did actually start calling ourselves Martians. 00:10:45.926 --> 00:10:51.532 So those of us who were on Mars time would refer to ourselves as Martians, 00:10:51.556 --> 00:10:54.409 and everyone else as Earthlings. NOTE Paragraph 00:10:54.433 --> 00:10:55.733 (Laughter) NOTE Paragraph 00:10:55.757 --> 00:11:01.452 And that's because when you're moving a time-zone every day, 00:11:01.476 --> 00:11:07.289 you start to really feel separated from everyone else. 00:11:07.313 --> 00:11:11.232 You're literally in your own world. 00:11:12.049 --> 00:11:18.974 So I have this button on that says, "I survived Mars time. Sol 0-90." 00:11:18.998 --> 00:11:21.743 And there's a picture of it up on the screen. 00:11:21.767 --> 00:11:27.396 So the reason we got these buttons is because we work on Mars time 00:11:27.420 --> 00:11:32.469 in order to be as efficient as possible with the rover on Mars, 00:11:32.493 --> 00:11:34.783 to make the best use of our time. 00:11:34.807 --> 00:11:38.693 But we don't stay on Mars time for more than three to four months. 00:11:38.717 --> 00:11:43.593 Eventually, we'll move to a modified Mars time, which is what we're working now. 00:11:44.524 --> 00:11:49.181 And that's because it's hard on your bodies, it's hard on your families. 00:11:49.205 --> 00:11:54.087 In fact, there were sleep researchers who actually were studying us 00:11:54.111 --> 00:11:59.148 because it was so unusual for humans to try to extend their day. 00:11:59.357 --> 00:12:02.548 And so, I wore an [actigraph]. 00:12:02.572 --> 00:12:03.862 And they had about 30 of us 00:12:03.886 --> 00:12:07.512 that they would do sleep deprivation experiments on. 00:12:07.536 --> 00:12:11.099 So I would come in and take the test and I fell asleep in each one. 00:12:11.123 --> 00:12:17.765 And that was because, again, this eventually becomes hard on your body. 00:12:17.789 --> 00:12:21.104 Even though it was a blast. 00:12:21.128 --> 00:12:25.642 It was a huge bonding experience with the other members on the team, 00:12:25.666 --> 00:12:28.506 but it is difficult to sustain. 00:12:29.488 --> 00:12:35.673 So these rover missions are our first steps out into the solar system. 00:12:35.697 --> 00:12:40.770 We are learning how to live on more than one planet. 00:12:40.794 --> 00:12:45.870 We are changing our perspective to become multi-planetary. 00:12:46.188 --> 00:12:48.983 So the next time you see a Star Wars movie, 00:12:49.007 --> 00:12:52.682 and there are people going from the Dagobah system to Tatooine, 00:12:52.706 --> 00:12:58.196 think about what it really means to have people spread out so far. 00:12:58.220 --> 00:13:01.282 What it means in terms of the distances between them, 00:13:01.306 --> 00:13:05.126 how they will start to feel separate from each other 00:13:05.150 --> 00:13:08.374 and just the logistics of the time. 00:13:09.182 --> 00:13:13.734 We have not sent people to Mars yet, but we hope to. 00:13:13.758 --> 00:13:17.597 And between companies like SpaceX and NASA 00:13:17.621 --> 00:13:21.110 and all of the international space agencies of the world, 00:13:21.134 --> 00:13:24.901 we hope to do that in the next few decades. 00:13:24.925 --> 00:13:30.750 So soon we will have people on Mars, and we truly will be multi-planetary. 00:13:31.245 --> 00:13:33.657 And the young boy or the young girl 00:13:33.681 --> 00:13:40.681 who will be going to Mars could be in this audience or listening today. 00:13:41.446 --> 00:13:47.048 I have wanted to work at JPL on these missions since I was 14 years old 00:13:47.072 --> 00:13:49.294 and I am privileged to be a part of it. 00:13:49.318 --> 00:13:53.372 And this is a remarkable time in the space program, 00:13:53.396 --> 00:13:56.570 and we are all in this journey together. 00:13:56.594 --> 00:14:01.805 So the next time you think you don't have enough time in your day, 00:14:01.829 --> 00:14:06.607 just remember, it's all a matter of your Earthly perspective. 00:14:06.631 --> 00:14:07.782 Thank you. 00:14:07.806 --> 00:14:11.920 (Applause)