Thanks to Albert Einstein, the US government wants to establish an official time zone for the Moon. And while this was something quite useless a few years ago, the reality is that humanity is about to permanently colonize the satellite.
However, it has less to do with jet lag and more to do with how gravity affects time and can seriously confuse many very precise technologies.
Anyone who has traveled long distances has had to deal with the annoyance of time zones. Going from one time zone to another is undoubtedly a hassle: sleep problems, out-of-sync clocks, etc. Now imagine this on the Moon.
The Moon needs a time zone for this reason
When the missions to the Moon began in the 60s, the question of standard time was never raised. Until today, every nation that sent a spacecraft to the Moon used the local time of the Mission Control or GMT. However, the number of planned missions to the Moon increases every year and these missions are becoming more and more complex, so a lunar standard time is necessary.
The reason has little to do with clocks. It has more to do with the intricacies of electronics and gravity. This is where Albert Einstein comes into play.
If you paid attention in physics class, you may remember Einstein’s Theory of Relativity. According to this theory, if a spaceship moves close to the speed of light, it appears to an external observer that time has slowed down on board the ship, although passengers may feel like they are moving normally.
What many people don’t know is that this same effect can be caused by a gravitational field. The more powerful a field you are in, the more it slows down time as seen from the outside. The effect is generally very small, but large enough to be measured and have real-world effects. For this reason, the standard for measuring time on Earth is at sea level in a specific location.
This is where the lunar standard time comes into play. On Earth, the average clock goes 58.7 microseconds per Earth day slower than its counterpart on the Moon.
When lunar missions operate independently from each other, that doesn’t matter, but when they work together or when satellites are used for navigation in lunar space, those 58.7 microseconds can mean the difference between success and failure, or worse if astronauts are involved.
To avoid this, Americans, through the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) of the White House, want NASA, along with the Departments of Commerce, Defense, State, and Transportation, to establish the Lunar Coordinated Time (LCT), which would be a lunar equivalent of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), the primary time standard used worldwide to regulate clocks and time on Earth and designed to be linked together.
It is expected that the task will take a decade, with the first milestones set for December 31, 2026. The ultimate goal is to make it an international standard through existing international forums, including nations associated with the Artemis Accords.
This standard would allow spacecraft to work safely with each other, provide accuracy to navigation systems, and eliminate date and time confusion in instructions transmitted from Earth or the Moon.
