What time is it on the moon? European Space Agency wants to give the moon its own time zone | Science

“A concerted international effort is now underway to achieve this,” said Pietro Giordano, an engineer at ESA. Currently, a lunar mission is running on the time of the country serving the spacecraft. European space officials said an 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 gearing up to send astronauts there.

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

The international team investigating lunar time is discussing whether it’s possible for a single organization to set and maintain the time on the moon, according to the European Space Agency. There are also technical problems. Clocks run faster on the moon than on Earth, gaining about 56 microseconds per day, the space agency said.

Perhaps most importantly, lunar time should be practical for the astronauts there, said Bernhard Hufenbach of the space agency. NASA is steps away from its first flight to the moon with astronauts in more than half a century, with a moon landing as early as 2025.

“This is going to be quite a challenge,” with each day on the moon lasting about 29.5 Earth days, Hufenbach said in a statement. “Now that we establish a working timing system for the moon, we can do the same for other planetary destinations.” Does anyone have an idea what time it is on Mars?