From the article: NASA plans to establish a Coordinated Lunar Time (LTC) in order to support future moon and space exploration, the agency announced earlier this month. The announcement follows a White House policy directive issued in April, and aims to create a standardized timekeeping system for the moon.
Led by NASA’s Space Communication and Navigation (SCaN) program, the initiative could eventually extend to other celestial bodies across the solar system. As humanity prepares to return to the Moon, LTC will be essential in developing a sustainable lunar ecosystem and ensuring the safety of future missions.
“The existence of a common time reference is the basis of our everyday life activities on Earth, and the same will be true on the Moon with the development of a lunar economy and the expansion of lunar exploration,” Javier Ventura-Traveset, Moonlight Project navigation manager at the European Space Agency (ESA), told Newsweek.
“In a very short term, for example, we may need to define a common lunar reference time to ensure that different space agencies’ planned lunar-based communication and navigation infrastructures remain interoperable; to establish growing lunar telecommunication networks; to precisely time-stamp some scientific experiments; to synchronize astronomical observations from lunar-based telescopes; or to coordinate time-sensitive operations such as spacecraft docking.”
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From the article: NASA plans to establish a Coordinated Lunar Time (LTC) in order to support future moon and space exploration, the agency announced earlier this month. The announcement follows a White House policy directive issued in April, and aims to create a standardized timekeeping system for the moon.
Led by NASA’s Space Communication and Navigation (SCaN) program, the initiative could eventually extend to other celestial bodies across the solar system. As humanity prepares to return to the Moon, LTC will be essential in developing a sustainable lunar ecosystem and ensuring the safety of future missions.
“The existence of a common time reference is the basis of our everyday life activities on Earth, and the same will be true on the Moon with the development of a lunar economy and the expansion of lunar exploration,” Javier Ventura-Traveset, Moonlight Project navigation manager at the European Space Agency (ESA), told Newsweek.
“In a very short term, for example, we may need to define a common lunar reference time to ensure that different space agencies’ planned lunar-based communication and navigation infrastructures remain interoperable; to establish growing lunar telecommunication networks; to precisely time-stamp some scientific experiments; to synchronize astronomical observations from lunar-based telescopes; or to coordinate time-sensitive operations such as spacecraft docking.”