Should the moon have a time zone? Europe pushes for ‘lunar reference time’

The European Space Agency wants to give the moon its own time zone as there are more lunar missions on the horizon than ever before.

The agency said this week that space organizations around the world are considering how best to keep time on the moon. The idea arose during a meeting in the Netherlands late last year, where participants agreed on the urgent need to establish a “common lunar reference time,” said space agency engineer Pietro Giordano.

“A joint international effort is underway to achieve this goal,” Giordano said in a statement.

At the moment, the lunar mission is carried out according to the time of the country in which the spacecraft is operated. European space officials said an internationally recognized lunar time zone would make life easier for everyone, especially as more countries and even private companies are aiming for the moon and NASA is about to send astronauts there.

NASA has had to deal with the issue of time in the design and construction of the International Space Station, fast approaching the 25th anniversary of the launch of its first object.

Although the space station does not have its own time zone, it operates on Coordinated Universal Time, or UTC, which is carefully based on atomic clocks. This helps share the time difference between NASA and the Canadian Space Agency, as well as other partner space programs in Russia, Japan, and Europe.

According to the European Space Agency, an international lunar time team is debating whether one organization should set and maintain time on the moon.

There are also technical issues to consider. According to the space agency, clocks on the Moon run faster than those on Earth, accelerating by about 56 microseconds each day. To complicate matters further, ticking occurs differently on the lunar surface than it does in lunar orbit.

Perhaps most importantly, lunar time should be practical for astronauts, notes Bernhard Hufenbach of the space agency. NASA is planning its first flight to the Moon with astronauts in over half a century in 2024, with a moon landing as early as 2025.

“This will be quite a challenge,” as each day will be 29.5 Earth days long, Hufenbach said in a statement. “But once we have established a working time system for the Moon, we can continue to do the same for other planetary destinations. ”

Martian Standard Time, anyone?