NASA Is Creating a ‘Moon Standard Time’
The White House announced Tuesday it is directing NASA to create a unified time standard for the Moon and other celestial bodies, as governments and private companies increasingly compete in space.
With the United States keen to set international norms beyond Earth’s orbit, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) instructed the US space agency to formulate a plan by the end of 2026 for a standard it is calling Coordinated Lunar Time.
“As NASA, private companies, and space agencies around the world launch missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond, it’s important that we establish celestial time standards for safety and accuracy,” OSTP Deputy Director for National Security Steve Welby said in a statement.
He noted how “time passes differently” depending on positions in space, offering the example of how time appears to pass more slowly where gravity is stronger, such as near celestial bodies.
“A consistent definition of time among operators in space is critical to successful space situational awareness capabilities, navigation, and communications,” Welby said.
The aim, the White House says, is for Coordinate Lunar Time, or LTC, to be tied to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), currently the primary time standard used throughout the world to regulate time on Earth.
The White House directed NASA to work with the Departments of Commerce, Defense, State and Transportation to deliver a time standard strategy that will improve navigation and other operations for missions in particular in cislunar space, the region between Earth and the Moon.
The new standard will focus on four features: traceability to UTC, accuracy sufficient to support precision navigation and science, resilience to loss of contact with Earth, and scalability to environments beyond cislunar space.
There were few technical specifics for establishing a lunar time standard laid out in the memorandum, but OSTP suggested it could adopt elements of the existing standard on Earth.
“Just as Terrestrial Time is set through an ensemble of atomic clocks on Earth, an ensemble of clocks on the Moon might set Lunar Time,” it said.
The United States is planning a return to the Moon in 2026, humanity’s first lunar landing since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.
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Tom
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Does this mean I gotta reset my clock again? What time zone is moon standard time?
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Tom O
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I will admit, this confuses me somewhat. A quote-
“He noted how “time passes differently” depending on positions in space, offering the example of how time appears to pass more slowly where gravity is stronger, such as near celestial bodies.”
I can’t wrap my mind around this. Does this say that I can leave Earth on Musk’s Starship headed to Mars at age, say, 30, and in the “Earth months” that it would take, I might years older when I get there since time is faster away from gravity? Or is it saying we can never leave the solar system because time will be too fast and we all die of old age tryingto get past Pluto? Does it mean that if I can just live in a space capsule in orbit around Jupiter, that I might be able to survive the upcoming return of the ice age on Earth because time will slow down so much more for me there?
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John V
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I guess all the wars have ended, inflation is eliminated, no multi trillion dollar debt, and cancer is cured. Nothing left to do.
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