Making Time on Mars

by Zara Mirmalek

An examination of how the daily work of NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers was organized across three sites on two planets using local Mars time. In 2004, mission scientists and engineers working with NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) remotely operated two robots at different sites on Mars for ninety consecutive days. An unusual feature of this successful mission was that it operated on Mars time—the daily work was organized across three sites on two planets according to two Martian time zones. In Making Time on Mars , Zara Mirmalek shows that this involved more than a resetting of wristwatches; the team's struggle to synchronize with Mars time involved technological and communication breakdowns, informal workarounds, and extra work to support the technology that was intended to support people. Her account of how NASA created an entirely new temporality for the MER mission offers insights about the assumptions behind the organizational relationship between clock time and work. Mirmalek, herself a member of the mission team, offers an insider's view of the MER workplace and community. She describes the discord among MER's multiple temporalities and examines issues of professional identity that helped shape the experience of working according to Mars time. Considering time and work relationships through a multidisciplinary lens, Mirmalek shows how contemporary and historical human–technology relationships inform assumptions about the unalterability of clock time. She argues that the organizational connection between clock time and work, although still operational, is outdated.

212 pages, Paperback

Published April 7, 2020

Reviews

[Andreas]

While it didn't meet my expectations on time on mars it exceeded my expectations on work-organisation here on earth. The oddities in regards to working on earth based on mars-time (which is just a given) rip open the deeply ingrained temporal structures that we are used to here on earth. This was a huge eye opener in regards to team-organisation amd work-time relationships.

[Stephen Yoder]

I enjoy anthropology and I’m rather certain I have enjoyed this book more now, in my way late 40s, than I would have during my 20s. There was something about all of the discussions about work norms, timing, and unspoken/spoken team values that really resonated with me. The challenges with time were so fascinating. I can’t even describe them quickly. I want to be a Mars rover when I grow up.