What time is it on the moon? The European Space Agency wants to give the Moon its own time zone Sciences

“A concerted international effort is being made to make this happen,” said Pietro Giordano, an engineer at the European Space Agency. Currently, a lunar mission is running while the country is serving the spacecraft. European space officials said the internationally accepted time zone on the moon would make things easier for everyone. Especially now that more countries and even private companies are targeting the moon and NASA is preparing to send astronauts there.

NASA really struggled with the problem of time when designing and building the International Space Station. That was 25 years ago. Although the space station does not have its own time zone, it operates in Coordinated Universal Time, or UTC, which is strictly based on atomic clocks. This helps regulate the time lag between NASA and other participating space programs in Russia, Japan and Europe.

An international team looking at lunar time is discussing whether it might be possible for a single organization to set and keep time on the moon, according to the European Space Agency. There are also technical problems. The space agency said clocks run faster on the moon than on Earth, gaining about 56 microseconds per day.

Perhaps most importantly, said Bernard Hoffenbach of the space agency, lunar time should be practical for the astronauts out there. NASA is steps away from making the first astronaut trip to the moon in more than half a century, with a moon landing as early as 2025.

“This will be a huge challenge,” Hoffenbach said in a statement, as each lunar day lasts about 29.5 Earth days. “Now that we’ve established a working timing system for the Moon, we can do the same for other planetary destinations.” Does anyone have an idea of ​​the time on Mars?