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1. BEST CLOCKMAKER ON MARS HOW TO
2. BEST CLOCKMAKER ON MARS DRIVERS
3. BEST CLOCKMAKER ON MARS SOFTWARE
4. BEST CLOCKMAKER ON MARS WINDOWS

The network is made up of three deep-space communications facilities which use radio frequency transmissions that travel through large antenna systems with specialized receivers.īecause of the distance between Earth and Mars, it takes about 20 minutes for the commands to reach the rover.

BEST CLOCKMAKER ON MARS HOW TO

The team receives training on how to best adjust to this working schedule, getting used to things like it being dinner time while the Sun is still out.įor Verma, a typical workday involves a 10-hour shift where she writes the commands for the rover to follow and beams them up to Mars through the Deep Space Network, NASA’s interplanetary communications network. “I do find it is taxing to the human body because we have rhythms, and now you're changing it,” Verma says. If you’re operating on Mars time, you have to pretend you’re on Mars.

BEST CLOCKMAKER ON MARS WINDOWS

Most of the time, Verma’s shifts begin late at night while it’s still daytime on Mars, so all windows must be covered as not to confuse the two timezones.

So for Verma, she begins each workday about 40 minutes later than the day before. But on Mars, one day is 24 hours, 39 minutes and 35.244 seconds. NASAĮarth operates on a 24-hour day basis. “Having Ingenuity and Perseverance in the same image captures that special aspect of Perseverance because for the first time there’s a rover and a helicopter together on Mars,” Verma says.

BEST CLOCKMAKER ON MARS DRIVERS

So you know, sort of the same thing.īut to drive a rover on Mars, rover drivers must first adjust to the Martian schedule. The task is very similar to playing a virtual reality video game, if that virtual reality was in fact the actual reality of another planet, and if the task at hand was answering the very impending question of whether life exists beyond Earth. But this Martian robot still needs guidance from the team down on Earth for more complex tasks.Īll in all, there have been about 12 other rover drivers. Unlike rovers before it, Perseverance is able to drive further during a given period of time, and is better suited to identify interesting rocks for further exploration, rather than relying on the mission team on the ground.

BEST CLOCKMAKER ON MARS SOFTWARE

She also worked on developing the flight simulation software systems used by Perseverance and making the rover more autonomous than its predecessors. Verma joined the rover team in 2008, working on the Spirit, Opportunity, and Curiosity rovers, the latter of which is still roaming Mars today. Her winning a competition in college for her design of a robot capable of navigating through a maze and collecting balloons didn’t hurt either. “In fact, I never thought I'd get to drive them.”īut her thesis, titled “Tractable Particle Filters for Robot Fault Diagnosis,” grabbed the attention of the robotics engineers at NASA.

“I was in grad school when Sojourner (NASA’s first rover on Mars) was developed,” Verma says. Verma started working with NASA in 2004 before graduation, while she was still completing her thesis. in robotics at Carnegie Mellon University. After graduating from Punjab Engineering College in Chandigarh, India with a bachelor of science in electrical engineering, she went on to pursue her Ph.D. The road to Mars - Verma was born and raised in Halwara, India. Verma next to models of various Mars rovers. Verma has been driving rovers on Mars since 2008, living between two different worlds while seeing the missions evolve over time.Īlthough the task can often be grueling - operating on the time zone of a different planet ends up taking a toll on the body - the roboticist still finds joy in her drives and in seeing more of the Red Planet. “When I look at one of the rover’s selfies, I can look at the back of the images and know the tracks of the drive I did,” Verma says. During her 10-hour shift, Verma operates on Mars from the perspective of the rover, working on Martian time and seeing the Red Planet through the robot’s eyes. Verma is the chief engineer for Robotic Operations for NASA’s Perseverance rover, and one of her many tasks is driving the rover on Mars. “I don’t know if there are rocks on Earth that I know as well as I know some of the rocks on Mars.” “When you’re driving, you’re so immersed in an environment,” Verma tells Inverse. Vandi Verma guides Inverse through her “evening,” where she arrives at her workstation, puts on her 3D glasses, and is transported to a different world, cruising along the Martian terrain and exploring its surface. in Pasadena, California, but about 6 p.m. The windows at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s mission control room have all been covered, and there are three clocks on the wall each for a different timezone: GMT, Pacific, and local mean solar time - or NASA’s long-form name for Mars time.