Book ID: CBB714285733

Making Time on Mars (2020)

unapi

Mirmalek, Zara Lenora (Author)


MIT Press


Publication Date: 2020
Physical Details: 212
Language: English

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 She argues that the organizational connection between clock time and work, although still operational, is outdated.

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Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB714285733/

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Authors & Contributors
Vertesi, Janet Amelia
Jesiek, Brent K.
Richard D. G. Irvine
Bao, Jinghui
Swetha Nittala
Natascha T. Buswell
Concepts
Mars
Space travel; space flight
Space research and exploration
Technoscience; science and technology studies
Work environment
Time perception
Time Periods
21st century
20th century, late
Modern
20th century
Places
United States
Germany
Europe
Australia
Institutions
Mars Exploration Rover Mission (U.S.)
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
United States. National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Place
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena
European Space Agency
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