First, the United States instructed NASA to develop a lunar time standard

United States Washington:

The White House announced on Tuesday that it would direct NASA to develop a unified time standard for the moon and other celestial bodies as competition between the government and private companies in space intensifies.

With the United States keen on setting international norms beyond Earth orbit, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) has directed NASA to develop a plan by the end of 2026 to develop a standard called “Coordinated Lunar Time.”

“As NASA, private companies and space agencies around the world launch missions to the moon, Mars and beyond, we build Celestial time standards are very important to ensure safety and accuracy.”

He noted that “time passes differently” depending on location in space, and gave the example of how time appears to pass more slowly in places where gravity is stronger, such as near celestial bodies.

“A consistent definition of time by space operators is critical to successful space situational awareness, navigation and communications,” Welby said.

The White House says the goal is to link lunar time, or LTC, to coordinated universal time, or UTC, which is currently the main time standard used around the world to regulate time on Earth.

The White House directed NASA to work with the departments of Commerce, Defense, State and Transportation to develop a strategy for time standards to improve navigation and other operations for missions, particularly in cislunar space (the region between the Earth and the moon).

The new standard will focus on four characteristics: traceability to UTC, accuracy sufficient to support precise navigation and science, resilience to loss of contact with the Earth, and scalability to environments beyond cislunar space.

The memo proposes few technical details for establishing a lunar time standard, but the Office of Science and Technology Policy said elements of existing standards on Earth could be adopted.

“Just as Earth time is set by a set of atomic clocks on Earth, lunar time may be set by a set of clocks on the Moon,” it said.

The United States plans to return to the moon in 2026, the first time humans have landed on the moon since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.

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