How do Mars scientists cope with the circadian shift?

22 April 2012

Part of the show Clock This: Science of Circadian Rhythm

Question

Mars scientists have to synchronise their body clocks with that of Mars which is slightly longer than the Earth day. So, can we use them as a research group and what would we expect to see happening as they're doing their research?

Answer

Russell - The Martian day is 24 hours and 36 minutes and of course, the Mars day is not going to map onto the day a lot of the time in Houston. In fact, when the Martian rover was trundling around, it was working brilliantly of course during the Martian day, but sometimes it was out of sync with mission control. The mission control guys got so tired, because it was out of sync, that they turned the rover off because they couldn't function.