NASA and its international partners have ambitious plans for the moon that require careful synchronization of Earth’s clocks with those on the Moon. The White House wants NASA to develop a solution to support the Artemis program while also maintaining the United States’ leadership in the global space race.
plan, Reuters first reportedNASA plans to develop Lunar Time Coordinated (LTC) by the end of 2026. Coordinating time systems on Earth is a relatively easy task, but due to the theory of relativity, it becomes more challenging once the moon is involved.
Because of Einstein’s theory of relativity, time passes differently on the moon than on Earth. The same is true for space in general. If you get close to a black hole, time – or at least the perception of it – slows down significantly due to the object’s intense gravity. The differences between how time passes on the moon and how time passes on Earth are very small, but they add up.
The White House directive is not without precedent. Last year, ESA opened applications Helping companies develop standardized moon clocks. NASA launches deep space atomic clock (DSAC) in 2019 to enable spacecraft to better navigate independently of Earth Gazette.
Currently, lunar missions use Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) as a universal time language to communicate with team members on Earth. Timekeeping in UTC is tied to a set of atomic clocks.In fact, UTC is just a Coordinated Universal Time Scale; you can read about the different types of Universal Time (and their many abbreviations and abbreviations) here. But as humans prepare for a semi-permanent presence on our rocky moon, space agencies have determined that a separate time system is needed to account for the problem of clocks on the moon running slightly faster than clocks on Earth.
an expert told nature The lunar clock would be 56 microseconds ahead of the Earth day. (The White House Office of Science and Technology estimates that 58.7 microseconds are lost each day.) If humans on the moon were operating using normal clocks, they would be completely out of sync with Earth time.
White House schedule vs. Timing of Project Artemiswhich will see NASA astronauts return to the lunar surface. Artemis 3 seeks crewed landing Near the lunar south pole no earlier than 2026.
The return to space race consists of a number of sprints, if you will, involving multiple areas of engineering and space science. One of those sprints is a race that defines time itself, and the White House just told athletes to start running. It remains an open question as to how Russia, China or other countries will respond to this seemingly unilateral action.
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