Q24N (EFE) The United States Government this week ordered its space agency, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), to develop a standard time zone for the Moon, where time passes a little faster than on Earth.
As occurred with the establishment of the Greenwich meridian as a global reference for time zones on Earth, the task entrusted to NASA occurs when international competition in space exploration accelerates.
A White House memo indicated the Biden Administration’s intention to develop by December 2026 “a standardization of celestial time with an initial focus on the lunar surface.” That standard will be known as ‘Coordinated Lunar Time’ (LTC).
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On Earth, time zones mark the passage of hours from the meridian where the Royal Greenwich Observatory is located, near London.
This system, used throughout the planet, is known as GMT (‘Greenwich Mean Time’) or UTC (‘Universal Time Coordinated) and its zero meridian is the one that passes 102 meters east of Greenwich.
The zero meridian on the Moon has been set in the middle of the satellite’s face visible from Earth and passes near Bruce Crater.
To measure the passage of time, atomic clocks are used, in which one second is equivalent to 9,192,631,770 oscillations of a cesium atom.
These clocks are affected by the force of gravity, which, in turn, is related to the mass of the planet or other body in space.
The Moon has a mass that is approximately 1.2% that of the Earth. In other words, the planet weighs 81 times more than its satellite and due to this difference, time moves, on average, 58.7 milliseconds faster on the Moon than on Earth.
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That, according to the White House memo, makes it necessary to establish a time standard that serves the exploration of the Moon and other celestial bodies where clocks will work at a different rate than on Earth.
The standard will serve to synchronize communications, spacecraft rendezvous and docking, and descents and departures on extraterrestrial surfaces.
The adoption at an international conference in 1884 of the Greenwich meridian as the starting line of the time system on Earth occurred after decades of bidding between different countries that disputed primacy in global affairs.
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