What’s time on moon?: Space agencies consider common time zone for lunar missions

With lunar exploration missions becoming more and more frequent with time, the space agencies of the world are mulling over a standard time zone for the moon. This will be a departure from the ongoing practice where the moon mission runs on the time of the country that is operating the spacecraft. The need for a standard time zone is discussed as multiple lunar missions felt the need to coordinate with each other.

The European Space Agency is vouching very actively for giving a time zone to the moon. The idea was also discussed during a meeting in the Netherlands last year where participants agreed on the urgent need to establish “a common lunar reference time", said the European space agency's Pietro Giordano, a navigation system engineer.

"A joint international effort is now being launched towards achieving this," Giordano said in a statement according to the news agency AP.

Space experts claim that an internationally accepted common time zone for the moon will make the coordination easier and more countries will be able to launch their separate lunar missions. Recently, the private space sector has also showcased interest in moon missions.

While designing and building the International Space Station (ISS) NASA also mulled over the idea. The ISS however, runs on Coordinated Universal Time, or UTC, which is based on atomic clocks and helps to split time zones between different space agencies of the world.

The stakeholders are also debating the point that whether a single organization should set and maintain the time on the moon. The issue also has a technical angle as clocks run faster on the moon than on earth. The ticking also occurs differently on the lunar surface and lunar orbit.

According to the website, Space.com Earth-based GNSS also depends on the International Terrestrial Reference Frame (ITRS) a three-dimensional coordinate system for Earth established in 1991. This allows consistent measurement of precise distances between points across our planet. Moon navigation will require a similar, internationally accepted moon-centered — or "selenocentric" — coordinate reference frame.