With more launches to the moon expected on the horizon, the European Space Agency wants to give the moon its own date scale.
This week, the agency said that space agencies around the world are considering how to calculate time on the moon. The idea was sparked during a meeting in the Netherlands late last year, and the participants agreed on the urgent need to establish a “common reference for lunar time,” said Pietro Giordano, an engineer for navigation systems at the agency, reports Al-Rai daily.
He added that “joint international efforts are now being launched to achieve this.” Currently, missions traveling to the country are timed by the country from which the spacecraft is launched.
European space officials said that an internationally agreed lunar time scale would make it easier for everyone, especially as more countries and even private companies are launching to the moon and NASA intends to send astronauts to it.
NASA had to face the issue of timing while designing and building the International Space Station, which is approaching the 25th anniversary of the launch of the first parts of it.
Although the space station does not have its own time zone, it operates according to Coordinated Universal Time, which is precisely calculated based on atomic clocks. That helps split the time lag between NASA, the Canadian Space Agency, and other partner programs in Russia, Japan and Europe.
An international team looking at the lunar time scale is debating whether a single organization should set and maintain time on the moon, the European Space Agency says.
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