LA CANADA FLINTRIDGE, Calif. — For one family, an exotic summer getaway means living on Mars. Martian time, that is.
Since the landing of NASA’s newest Mars rover, flight director David Oh’s family has taken the unusual step of tagging along as he leaves Earth time behind and syncs his body clock with the Red Planet.
Every mission to Mars, a small army of scientists and engineers reports to duty on “Mars time” for the first three months. But it’s almost unheard of for an entire family to flip their lives upside down.
But Oh’s wife, Bryn, could not pass up the chance to take their kids — 13-year-old Braden, 10-year-old Ashlyn and 8-year-old Devyn — on a Martian adventure from their home near the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory where the Curiosity rover was built.
Days on Mars last 39 minutes and 35 seconds longer than on Earth. To stay in lockstep, nearly 800 people on the $2.5 billion project have surrendered to the Martian cycle of light and dark. In the simplest sense, each day slides forward 40 minutes.
“We all feel a little sleepy, a little jet-lagged all day long, but everyone is doing great,” Bryn Oh said.
