Місяць сходить у Праттвіллі, штат Алабама, 22 червня 2013 року. Фото: Дейв Мартін/AP
Coordinated Lunar Time (LTC) will establish an official time to help guide future lunar missions.
Memorandum, publicized announced by the Biden administration on Tuesday, provides for NASA to work with the Departments of Commerce, Defense, Transportation, and State to plan a strategy for putting LTC into practice by December 31, 2026.
How writes Engadget, international cooperation will play an important role, given the signing of the «Artemis» — Common Principles for Space Exploration, which has been signed by 37 countries, including Ukraine (China and Russia are not part of the group).
«As NASA, private companies, and space agencies around the world launch missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond, it is important that we establish lunar time standards for safety and accuracy,» wrote Steve Welby, deputy director for national security at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP).
According to Einstein’s theories of relativity, time varies with speed and gravity. Given the Moon’s weaker gravity (and the differences in motion between it and Earth), the passage of time is slightly faster there — thus, Earth’s clocks on the Moon’s surface appear to gain an average of 58.7 microseconds per Earth day. As the United States and other countries plan missions to explore and (eventually) build bases for permanent residence on the MoonThe use of a single standard will help them synchronize technologies and missions.
Space News notes that the policy sets four main characteristics for LTC: tracking to UTC, accuracy for navigation and science, resilience to loss of contact with Earth, and scalability to environments beyond Earth’s outer space.
The document provides little technical guidance on how to establish a lunar time standard, but suggests that it could be done similarly to Earth time standards that use a network of atomic clocks.
«Just as Earth time is set by an ensemble of atomic clocks on Earth, an ensemble of clocks on the Moon can set lunar time», — the policy says.
In May 2023, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) also announced that it is working with NASA to development of a positioning and navigation system for the Moon which should work «as accurately and safely as GPS on Earth».