Making Time on Mars

Technologies both futuristic and familiar played significant roles on the
Mars Exploration Rovermission, from Alpha Particle X- ray Spectrometers for in situ chemical  analysis of Mars features to airbags for cushioning the robots’ landings on
Mars. The most curious of them all was “Mars time”— a version of clock
time used to keep track of Mars’s planetary rotation that was chosen as the
primary time zone according to which MER’s daily schedule of work activi-
ties was arranged and restricted, every day for three months. This is a book
about time on Mars— how institutions, individuals, and machines worked
together to produce a form of temporality that mattered for the particular
and unique workspace of Martian science and exploration.