the Cape Canaveral The European Space Agency wants to give the Moon its own schedule, with a record number of lunar missions on the horizon.
This week, the agency stated that its global counterparts were debating the best way to gauge the time on the moon. L’idée a été soulevée lors d’une rencontre aux Pays-Bas l’an dernier, et les participants se sont entendus sur l’urgence d’établir « un time lunaire common de référence ».
A lunar mission now uses the time of the nation that organises it. As more nations and even private companies plan to visit the Lune, several European space agency directors believe that a universally accepted lunar time zone would make life easier for everyone.
When designing and building the International Space Station, whose first module will soon turn 25 years old, the American space agency NASA ran into this issue.
Although though the station doesn’t have its own internal clock, it makes use of the globally coordinated time, which is based on extremely precise atomic clocks. This helps to balance the station’s programming, which includes Russian, Japanese, and European programmes, with those of Canada and the United States.
Researchers must also overcome technical challenges. According to the space agency, clocks move more quickly on the moon than on Earth and gain about 56 microseconds per day. Making matters even more complicated, watches don’t operate in the same way while they’re orbiting around a body.
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