Accurate Solar Time on Planet Mars
“It would be like traveling two time zones every three days,” said physiologist Laura Barger of Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
According to NASA, the purpose of accurate time-keeping on Mars is to study its weather and climate, with scientists using Mars spacecraft and tagging measurements in “Mars local solar time“. An average Martian day, or sol day, is counted as 39 minutes, 35.2 seconds longer than the terrestrial 24 hours. Meanwhile, a Mars solar year is 1.881 Earth years, or 668.59 sols. Working on NASA’s
Presently, NASA’s Phoenix Mars Lander has over 150 scientists and engineers who work in such an atmosphere, with all of them living on a Mars schedule since the landing of the Phoenix on May 25th. During the daytime when the Phoenix is gathering its data, the team is resting. But during the Martian nights, when the Phoenix Lander is sleeping—they are gathering and analyzing the data that has come in.
But near the NASA team is a blue LED light box as they work throughout the Martian nights, helping extend their days by regulating their circadian cycles. This is due to a schedule that is shifting forward 40 minutes on every day, causing the human body a perpetual jet lag. Presently a study of 18-members of the Phoenix team is being done by physiologist Laura Barger of Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, in order to monitor fatigue symptoms and tips for living out-of-sync with the rest of the world. The study is to assist future space travelers and missions to Mars.
Jet lag is considered a “temporary disruptions of the body’s sleep/wake rhythm caused by high-speed air travel through different time zones.” Modern jet travel has brought it about, which usually causes loss of working efficiency and holiday enjoyment for several days after jet arrivals. Technically, the body clock needs to be reset in addition to the watch, as jetlag is brought about by a disruption of the “body clock”, which consists of a small cluster of brain cells. These cells control the brain cells which control the timing of biological functions or circadian rhythms—including eating and drinking.
Jet lag occurs when the body’s design for regular rhythms of daylight and darkness is disrupted, thrown out of sync when they are experienced at “the wrong times” in a new time zone—persisting for days until the internal body clock slowly adjusts to the new time zone.
This entry was posted on Sunday, July 27th, 2008 at 1:45 am and is filed under Space Agency News, Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
