Moon may have its own time zone – 08/03/2023 – Science

What time is it on the moon?

Since the dawn of the space age, the answer has been: it depends. For decades, lunar missions operated on the timing of the country that launched them. But with several lunar explorations heading to the launch pad, the European Space Agency (ESA) deemed the current system unsustainable.

The solution, the agency said last week, is a lunar time zone.

“ESA is not leading this discussion; we are just pointing out a problem we need to address,” said Brice Dellandrea, an engineer at ESA. “But this is the kind of issue that needs international coordination and consensus.”

The main objective of establishing a universal timekeeping system for the Moon, said the ESA, is to facilitate contact between the various countries and entities, public and private, that coordinate travel to and around the natural satellite.

The discussion about how to do this is happening as things start to get excited on and above the lunar surface.

The M1 lunar module built by the Japanese company Ispace is due to reach the Moon in April, when it will try to deploy an exploration vehicle built by the United Arab Emirates; a robot built by Japan’s space agency Jaxa; and other loads.

A six-legged cylindrical robot called the Nova-C lander, built by Houston-based company Intuitive Machines, is due to launch on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 and land at the Moon’s South Pole in June. Additional unmanned missions will arrive by the end of the year, according to Jack Burns, director of the Space Science and Exploration Network at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Those missions, among other possible lunar landings, are happening as NASA prepares to send four astronauts into lunar orbit next year. That mission will pave the way for the first manned moon landing since Apollo 17 in December 1972, currently planned for 2025.

The European Space Agency, for its part, is contributing to NASA’s effort to build the Gateway lunar station, which will serve as a way station for future crews en route to the lunar surface. Last year, China completed construction of its own space station and has already hinted that Chinese astronauts would be on the moon by 2030. South Korea launched its lunar spacecraft, Danuri, on a SpaceX Falcon rocket from Florida in August. . It joined India’s Chandrayaan-2 mission, as well as spacecraft from NASA and China, in its orbit of the Moon.

With increased exploitation comes the potential for miscommunication.

“These missions will not only be on or around the Moon at the same time, but will often also interact – potentially relaying communications to each other, carrying out joint observations or rendezvous operations,” the ESA said in a statement.

For all these interactions to run smoothly, the missions will need to operate on a standardized schedule, the agency said.

“This idea of ​​timekeeping on the Moon is important because it shows the international development of the Moon,” said Burns. “Precision timing was critical to navigation on Earth and is critical to navigation between Earth and the Moon.”

The ESA has said that a universal timing system is needed for the Moon, but that many details still need to be ironed out. One of the outstanding questions, according to the agency, is whether lunar time should be set there or synchronized with Earth.

Time on Earth is precisely tracked by atomic clocks, but synchronizing time on the Moon is tricky because clocks run faster there, gaining about 56 microseconds, or millionths of a second, per day.

Once a new lunar time zone is established, the methods used to create it will be useful for future space exploration, Burns said. Astronauts will be able to go to Mars in the next two to three decades, he said, and will face logistical hurdles similar to those a Martian time zone could solve.

“We will be an exploratory civilization in which we travel beyond Earth’s orbit,” Burns said. “We’re going to the moon and after that to Mars.”

Kenneth collaborated Chang

^{Translated by Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves}