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Living on Mars Time

Posted by michael on from the set-your-alarm-clock dept.

Roland Piquepaille writes "When NASA's rovers, 'Spirit' and 'Opportunity,' touch down on Mars next January, scientists and engineers in charge of the missions at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), will start to experiment with a 90-day period of jet lag. Why? Because, as reports Astrobiology Magazine, 'a day on Mars is 39.5 minutes longer than a day on Earth.' To accommodate the requirements of interplanetary communication, during the mission the Spirit science and engineering teams will have to live on Mars time, in synch with the red planet's cycle of light and dark. This means that, here on Earth, they'll sometimes be working during daylight hours, and at other times they'll be working through the night. This summary contains more details and a screenshot of the Mars24 application, a Java program which gives you the time on Mars."

9 of 234 comments (clear)

  1. well..... by boogy+nightmare · · Score: 4, Funny

    Have these people never had to work to a deadline before ???

    two words for them

    JOLT COLA :)

    --
    Kingdom of Loathing (www.kingdomofloathing.com) Addicted is me
  2. does it matter all that much? by kurosawdust · · Score: 5, Funny
    "Hey, what time is it?"

    "Time to scoop up dust, analyze it and try to forget the fact that we pee through a tube."

    "Oh."

  3. Mars24? by Da+Fokka · · Score: 4, Funny

    A Java Application to display martian time? That sounds like a Java 101 excersise :)

    Although the screenshots do look pretty neat.

  4. Oh, those poor guys by The+Wing+Lover · · Score: 5, Funny
    This means that, here on Earth, they'll sometimes be working during daylight hours, and at other times they'll be working through the night

    Which is, of course, totally and completely different from what we do as computer people.

    --

    - In Capitalist America, law violates YOU!

  5. Project Planning Fantasy by puppetluva · · Score: 4, Funny

    a day on Mars is 39.5 minutes longer than a day on Earth.

    Great. This is a project-planner's fantasy. Forget offshore, we should move our software projects off-planet.

    1. Re:Project Planning Fantasy by Seahawk · · Score: 4, Funny

      Or even better - this means they can stay in bed those 30 minutes we all want to when its time to get up...

  6. 24/7 by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Well, that dratted "24/7" slogan is definitely doomed on Mars.

  7. Re:Sounds like a crazy idea by richie2000 · · Score: 3, Funny
    completely ignoring local time.

    Well, say you set up a lunch meeting with the Martians at 12 o'clock sharp and you show up 15 minutes late, what does that say about us as a species? Is that really the message you want to send them?

    --
    Money for nothing, pix for free
  8. Re:25 hour cycle? by JavaLord · · Score: 3, Funny

    actually we revert to a 24.39 hour life cycle which proves we are all really martians.