The two-year-old company with only six employees had to create a flexible roster based on Mars time for the hundreds of scientists and engineers working on the mission, FriarTuck co-founder Martin Henz told reporters.

"NASA had a requirement where certain patterns of shifts had to be allocated in order to satisfy fatigue management requirements," Henz said.

"The reason for this is each day on Mars is about 40 minutes longer than one earth day.

"This means the scientist is starting his shift 40 minutes later and that leads to unique fatigue problems."

Jacob Phang, chief executive officer of the National University of Singapore's Enterprise programme, which helped to create and fund FriarTuck, said the opportunity to work with NASA was a tremendous privilege.

"(Organisations like NASA) have a very strong preference to work with US-based companies," he said.

FriarTuck adapted an existing application software they had designed for the scheduling of doctors at the National University Hospital to NASA's needs.

The company first started out in the sports field, scheduling soccer and basketball tournaments for US colleges.

The Mars Exploration Rover mission, at a cost of 820 million dollars, is to last three months for two robots, Spirit and Opportunity.

Spirit touched down on Mars on January 3, while Opportunity landed on the other side of the planet on January 24.

NASA scientists hope soil analysis of the planet will reveal the past presence of water and other conditions that could indicate life once existed there, which is the ultimate aim of the mission.

SPACE.WIRE