The European Space Agency wants to establish a separate time zone on the moon since more lunar missions are planned than ever before.
The space agency reported this week that many international space agencies are debating the best way to keep time on the moon.
According to Pietro Giordano, a navigation system engineer for the space agency, the concept was brought up at a meeting in the Netherlands towards the end of last year, where participants agreed on the urgent need to establish “a single lunar reference time.”
Giordano stated, “a unified worldwide effort is now being undertaken towards accomplishing this.”
A lunar mission currently follows the nation’s time zone that is in charge of the spacecraft.
According to European space authorities, everyone would benefit from having a universally recognized lunar time zone, mainly as more nations and even private firms aim for the moon and NASA prepares to deploy astronauts there.
Fast nearing the 25th anniversary of the launch of its first component, NASA was forced to consider the issue of time while planning and constructing the International Space Station.
The space station operates on Coordinated Universal Time, or UTC, which is strictly based on atomic clocks, despite not having its time zone.
The time gap between NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, and the other cooperating space programs in Russia, Japan, and Europe is thus more evenly distributed.
According to the European Space Agency, the multinational team studying lunar time argues whether one institution should establish and maintain time on the moon.
You should also think about the technical concerns. According to the space agency, clocks on the moon run 56 microseconds quicker than those on Earth. Ticking behaves differently on the lunar surface than in lunar orbit, further complicating issues.
Hermann Hufenbach of the space agency pointed out that maybe the most crucial requirement for lunar time will be that it be useful for astronauts there.
NASA hopes to send astronauts to the moon for the first time in more than 50 years in 2024, with a possible lunar landing as early as 2025.
With each day lasting up to 29.5 Earth days, Hufenbach noted in a statement that “this will be quite a task.” But now that we have a workable time system for the moon, we can apply it to other planetary locations.
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