Time-Zone Problems

Anytime we plan to call someone in another country, whether for work or for personal reasons, we have to check what time is it out there. Call center operators work night shifts for the same reason. But at least the time difference between two places remains the same, except for the Day Light Saving adjustments made by some countries.

Imagine how much tougher it would be if the time difference between two places changed on a daily basis! That’s exactly the scenario that NASA engineers working with the Red Rover module on Mars have to face. Why? Because, as Nagin Cox, said in her TED talk:

“Our day is 24 hours. It takes Mars 24 hours and approximately 40 minutes to rotate once. So that means that the Martian day is 40 minutes longer than the Earth day.”

But why should that matter? Aha, because the plans/instructions for the next Mars day have to be relayed at (Mars) night, while the Rover “sleeps”, i.e., takes a break from her operations on Mars to recharge her batteries. Literally! So this is how Cox’s schedule moves:

“So one day you come in at 8:00, the next day 40 minutes later at 8:40, the next day 40 minutes later at 9:20, the next day at 10:00. So you keep moving 40 minutes every day, until soon you're coming to work in the middle of the night — the middle of the Earth night. Right? So you can imagine how confusing that is.”

It gets worse (or funnier). Communication even on earth when it comes to matters about the Rover can be very confusing:

“I remember somebody walked up to me and said, "I would like to do this activity on the vehicle tomorrow, on the rover." And I said, "Tomorrow, tomorrow, or Mars, tomorrow?"

All this has an inevitable psychological effect too:

“When you're moving a time-zone every day, you start to really feel separated from everyone else. You're literally in your own world.”

Multi-planetary time-zones are far more painful than the ones on earth, isn’t it?