NASA To Develop Lunar Time Standard for Exploration Initiatives (nasa.gov)
(Monday September 16, 2024 @11:20AM (msmash)
from the clearing-the-air dept.)
- Reference: 0175006679
- News link: https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/09/16/1359252/nasa-to-develop-lunar-time-standard-for-exploration-initiatives
- Source link: https://www.nasa.gov/solar-system/moon/nasa-to-develop-lunar-time-standard-for-exploration-initiatives/
NASA will coordinate with U.S. government stakeholders, partners, and international standards organizations to [1]establish a Coordinated Lunar Time (LTC) following a policy directive from the White House in April. From a report:
> The agency's Space Communication and Navigation (SCaN) program is leading efforts on creating a coordinated time, which will enable a future lunar ecosystem that could be scalable to other locations in our solar system. The lunar time will be determined by a weighted average of atomic clocks at the Moon, similar to how scientists calculate Earth's globally recognized Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Exactly where at the Moon is still to be determined, since current analysis indicates that atomic clocks placed at the Moon's surface will appear to 'tick' faster by microseconds per day. A microsecond is one millionth of a second. NASA and its partners are currently researching which mathematical models will be best for establishing a lunar time. To put these numbers into perspective, a hummingbird's wings flap about 50 times per second. Each flap is about .02 seconds, or 20,000 microseconds. So, while 56 microseconds may seem miniscule, when discussing distances in space, tiny bits of time add up.
[1] https://www.nasa.gov/solar-system/moon/nasa-to-develop-lunar-time-standard-for-exploration-initiatives/
> The agency's Space Communication and Navigation (SCaN) program is leading efforts on creating a coordinated time, which will enable a future lunar ecosystem that could be scalable to other locations in our solar system. The lunar time will be determined by a weighted average of atomic clocks at the Moon, similar to how scientists calculate Earth's globally recognized Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Exactly where at the Moon is still to be determined, since current analysis indicates that atomic clocks placed at the Moon's surface will appear to 'tick' faster by microseconds per day. A microsecond is one millionth of a second. NASA and its partners are currently researching which mathematical models will be best for establishing a lunar time. To put these numbers into perspective, a hummingbird's wings flap about 50 times per second. Each flap is about .02 seconds, or 20,000 microseconds. So, while 56 microseconds may seem miniscule, when discussing distances in space, tiny bits of time add up.
[1] https://www.nasa.gov/solar-system/moon/nasa-to-develop-lunar-time-standard-for-exploration-initiatives/
Gotta keep ... (Score:2)
by PPH ( 736903 )
... those railroads on schedule.
Bureacracy run amok (Score:2)
by laughingskeptic ( 1004414 )
This is completely unnecessary. If scientists on the moon need super accurate times, they can do the same thing scientists on earth do and buy something like this [1]https://www.microchip.com/en-u... [microchip.com] which is free of network latency issues.
Otherwise what the few people on the Moon are going to care about in their daily lives is ... shocker ... what time is it on Earth?
There is no demonstrated need for a distributed, highly accurate time system on the moon that is independent of Earth time. We can simpl
[1] https://www.microchip.com/en-us/products/clock-and-timing/components/atomic-clocks/atomic-system-clocks/cesium-time/5071a
Why not UTC? (Score:5, Interesting)
It's in the name: "universal". Sure, you have toake minor corrections for gravity. We manage that for satellites, so surely we can manage it for a really big satellite?