What time is it on the moon? They promote a project for the satellite to have its own time zone

With the prospect of other lunar missions on the horizon, the European Space Agency wants to give the Moon its own time zone.

This week, the Agency reported that space organizations around the world are studying the best way to keep time on the Moon. The idea was born during a meeting held in the Netherlands at the end of last year, during which the participants agreed on the urgent need to establish “a common lunar reference time,” he explained. Peter Jordanspace agency navigation systems engineer.

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

For now, a moon mission is working on the time of the country that operates the spacecraft. European space officials say an internationally accepted lunar time zone would make things easier for everyone, especially as more countries and even private companies target the moon and NASA prepares to send astronauts there.

NASA had to deal with the question of time when designing and building the International Space Station, which is about to mark the 25th anniversary of the launch of its first piece.

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

The international team that studies lunar time wonders if a single organization should set and maintain time on the Moonaccording to the European Space Agency.

There are also technical issues to consider. Clocks are ticking faster on the Moon than on Earth, gaining about 56 microseconds every day, according to the space agency. To complicate matters further, ticking occurs differently on the lunar surface than in lunar orbit.

And what is more important, lunar time should be convenient for astronautshe pointed Bernard Hufenbachof the space agency.

NASA plans to make its first flight to the Moon with astronauts in more than half a century in 2024, with a moon landing as early as 2025.

“It will be quite a challenge,” since each day will last 29.5 Earth days, Hufenbach said in a statement. “But once a running time system is established for the Moon, we can continue to do the same for other planetary destinations.”

(With AP information)

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