NASA will establish a standard time for the Moon

The head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) has asked NASA to coordinate with other agencies in the US Government to come up with a plan to establish Coordinated Lunar Time (LTC) on end of 2026.

Kevin Coggins, NASA's director of space navigation and communications, said in an interview: 'The clocks we use on Earth move at a different speed when they are on the Moon. Think of the atomic clock (which calculates time by atomic state) at the US Naval Observatory. They are the 'heartbeat' of the nation that keeps everything in sync. You would want to have such a 'heartbeat' at the Moon'.

To a person on the Moon, a clock on Earth would appear to lose an average of 58.7 microseconds per Earth day and be accompanied by other periodic variations.

An OSTP official said that without establishing LTC, it will be difficult to ensure secure data transmission between spacecraft as well as synchronization of communications between Earth, lunar satellites, and base stations. bases and astronauts.

Time differences can also lead to errors in mapping and locating locations on or orbiting the Moon.