[drewmcd24]

I saw this post on Boing Boing earlier today, and did a little googling to find out more. Apparently JPL scientists working on the Martian rover projects needed to stay in sync with the Martian solar day, which is 24 hours and 37 minutes long, so they found a local watchmaker to put together some custom watches that ran on this cycle. Here's the story from JPL:

Mars Exploration Rover Mission: Spotlight

The watches themselves are not exactly my taste, but I love the idea of a watch that can keep track of the time on Earth and Mars simultaneously.

 

[Janne]

"discovered that it was off by no more than 10seconds in 24 hours Earth time an amazingly accurate feat for a mechanical watch."

Hm, some people heve lower standards than even me!
If this spirit permeates the Mars exploration, we will never get there.
I can not see a problem designing a timepiece from scratch that will measure the Martian time.

 

[drewmcd24]

I can not see a problem designing a timepiece from scratch that will measure the Martian time.

You should design and produce one and send it to NASA then. ;-)

I think the problem is the expense. It would probably cost an arm and a leg to commission a new watch just for this purpose. And as the article states, nobody would do it without an agreement from JPL to purchase at least 10,000 units.

 

[brandon\]

That is a really neat and interesting story.

 

[Janne]

The easiest is to reprogram a quartz watch I would imagine
The next easiest is to recalculate the inside of a mechanic watch.
Every proper master watchmaker can do that.
I am assuming that a Martian day (called sol) has 24 hours. Each hour 60 minutes, and each minute 60 seconds.They are just a little bit longer than the Earth version.

I hope that Groundcontrol will use the same time measurement.

Did not a recent attempt fail because the Brits used the Imperial system and the Americans the Metric?

 

[Sodiac]

I'm not seeing the watches in the article?

 

[drewmcd24]

I'm not seeing the watches in the article?

They're linked in the boing boing post.