Moon: With more moon-related missions than ever before in the near future The European Space Agency wants to provide the moon with the ability to establish its own local timezone. The agency announced that space agencies around the globe are examining ways to maintain time on the Moon. The idea was conceived during an event in the Netherlands at the end of last year where participants agreed on the need to create “a common lunar reference time,” stated the agency’s Pietro Giordano, a navigation system engineer.
“A joint international effort is now being launched towards achieving this,” Giordano stated in an announcement.
At present, it is operating in the time zone of the country which is the operator of the spacecraft. European space officials say the moon’s time zone could facilitate everyone to work with, particularly as more nations and private firms aim to orbit the moon, and NASA plans to send astronauts to the moon.
NASA had to deal with the question of time while developing and creating its International Space Station, fast approaching the 25th anniversary of the launch of its initial piece.
Although the space station does not possess its own specific timezone, the station operates using Coordinated Universal Time or UTC which is dependent on Atomic clocks. This helps in dividing the time differences across NASA as well as Canada Space Agency, Canadian Space Agency, and other space programs that are located in Russia, Japan, and Europe.
The international team that is studying the lunar time debates whether it is appropriate for a single entity to determine and keep track of time on the moon, as per the European Space Agency.
There are other technical aspects to take into consideration. The clocks are faster on the moon than they do on Earth which is approximately 56 microseconds per day, NASA declared. To make matters more complicated the fact that ticking happens differently when you are on lunar land than in the lunar orbit.
Most importantly, the lunar period must be feasible for astronauts as stated by NASA’s Bernhard Hufenbach. NASA is planning to launch its first mission to the moon in space with astronauts over 50 years in 2024, with the moon landing scheduled by 2025.
“This will be quite a challenge” with every day being at least 29.5 earth days,” Hufenbach claimed in an interview. “But having established a working time system for the moon, we can go on to do the same for other planetary destinations.”
Mars Standard Time, anyone?
