| |
ZL2VAL > SPIRIT 07.01.04 13:48l 133 Lines 6048 Bytes #999 (0) @ WW
BID : 32875_ZL2AB
Read: GUEST
Subj: Team works on Mars time
Path: DB0FHN<DB0RGB<DB0MRW<OK0PKL<OK0PCC<OK0PPR<OK0PPL<DB0RES<ON0AR<ZL2TZE<
W7NTF<WA7V<VK7AX<ZL2BAU<ZL2WA<ZL2AB
Sent: 040107/1041Z @:ZL2AB.#46.NZL.OC #:32875 [New Plymouth] FBB7.00g $:32875_Z
From: ZL2VAL@ZL2AB.#46.NZL.OC
To : SPIRIT@WW
Mars time tests team
Jan 6, 2004
Rover operators shift schedules to be in sync with planet's day
By John Kelly and Chris Kridler
FLORIDA TODAY
PASADENA, Calif. -- Wendy Calvin is living like a Martian now.
While the rest of the people in their lives are still sleeping at
night, going to work, having meals and feeding their pets on Earth
time, Calvin and 200 or so colleagues on the rover team are living
on Mars time.
"My cats are staying with my husband, so they get to stay on Earth
time," said Wendy Calvin, a University of Nevada at Reno
geophysicist who's participating in the rover mission at the Jet
Propulsion Laboratory here.
The rover teams practiced mission operations last year, but a
five-day drill can't prepare you for a three-month rover mission on
Mars time, she said. "You just start doing it," Calvin said.
While people outside the Jet Propulsion Laboratory are having an
after-dinner snack one day, the team working on Spirit might be
eating lunch. At press briefings, they speak about "this afternoon"
when it's already 10 p.m. All their time references are based on
Spirit's day on Mars. Steve Squyres, principal investigator for the
science mission, even wears a custom-timed watch -- a gift presented
to him by his science team -- that's on Martian time.
A day on Mars lasts almost 40 minutes longer than one in southern
California. Adjusting to that clock might sound easy enough, but it
involves more than just punching some buttons on alarm clocks or
sliding the minute forward on a watch.
It won't take many days to start turning people's lives upside down.
"It really plays havoc with your biological clock," said Firouz
Naderi, manager of NASA's Mars exploration program. "We are slaves
to the rovers. Pretty soon, your day and night are reversed."
That's because the rover, operating almost exclusively on solar
power, will work when the sun is up on Mars. Two teams will work in
about 12-hour shifts -- one while the rover roves during the
daytime; the other doing homework while the rover sleeps, preparing
for the next day.
Joy Crisp, the project scientist, said it only gets more confusing
-- for more people -- in a few weeks when a second rover plops onto
Mars and JPL starts running two separate mission control rooms at
the same time.
"It will be very intense," Crisp said.
JPL learned some lessons from similar adjustments during the 1997
Pathfinder mission. People struggled with the time shift and many
overworked themselves. They didn't want to go home and miss
something. Some eventually burned out.
Work about consecutive 30 days, with nothing more than cat naps, and
"it's almost like you're drunk. It's hard to convince people to let
go, but it's important for safety," Crisp said. And these rovers
could roll around for 90 days or more.
So this time around, NASA called for help. They consulted with
experts at the agency's Ames Research Center in northern California,
which that has done sleep and fatigue research for the airline
industry and others that have to operate on abnormal schedules.
One suggested fix was to strictly enforce a four days on, three days
off schedule that mandated rover team members go home to rest. Some
will still wear down, but Crisp said managers will be watching for
people who look tired.
"You're going to have like 200 psychotic people in 20 days or so and
you don't want that," said Dave Korsmeyer, an Ames manager involved
in development of computing and other tools to help the rover teams
deal with the time and other unique challenges of operating on Mars.
"You remember sleep deprivation in college," Korsmeyer said. "These
guys are going to be driving billion-dollar rovers around. You don't
want them to have a fatigue problem."
One seemingly simple thing the Ames technology people did was
integrate a clock into the computer software the team is using that
automatically converts California time to Mars time.
"You know that at noon on Mars, you're going to do some task,"
Korsmeyer said. "But you're thinking, 'Well, when is that?' This
tells you that's at 6 p.m. and you don't have to think about it."
About 40 team members are part of a study by sleep researchers, who
want to see how adapting to the Martian schedule impacts human
performance. The sleep study is being led by a Harvard University
researcher who last year published a study assessing the
sleep-related challenges that could face the astronauts that will
someday make the same adjustment while working on the surface of Mars.
Some team members are wearing special watches with instruments that
measure their motion so the researchers will know when they were
awake and when they were snoozing.
"I feel OK so far, but I don't think we've settled down into a
schedule, really," mission team member Julie Townsend said Tuesday.
She's wearing one watch tuned to Mars time, and the Actiwatch for
the sleep study.
She's working with Spirit and also working on Opportunity's approach
to Mars. Like many at JPL, she's working her shift and then staying
to see what else Spirit will reveal. Managers keep reminding them to
go home. "That's a mantra we've been hearing a lot for the last
month or so," Townsend said.
==============================
73 de Alan
*----------------------------------------------------------------*
| Packet: ZL2VAL@ZL2AB.#46.NZL.OC APRS: =3903.39S/17406.40E] |
| E-mail: zl2val@qsl.net Snail mail address: http://www.qrz.com |
*----------------------------------------------------------------*
Points to ponder
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I intend to live forever. So far, so good...
Read previous mail | Read next mail
| |
