White House orders NASA to create lunar time standard – Reuters
- April 3, 2024
- 0
The White House instructed the space agency NASA to create a single time standard for the Moon and other celestial bodies in order to establish international norms in
The White House instructed the space agency NASA to create a single time standard for the Moon and other celestial bodies in order to establish international norms in space.
This is stated in the official memo seen by the agency. According to Reuters, Ukrinform.
According to him, the head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) instructed NASA, together with other units of the US government, to develop a plan to create the so-called “coordinated lunar time” (LTC). ) until the end of 2026. LTC will be the time reference for lunar spacecraft and satellites that require extreme precision to complete their missions.
For a human on the moon, Earth time would lose an average of 58.7 microseconds per Earth day and would have other periodic variations that would further differentiate lunar time from Earth time, OSTP chief Arathi Prabhakar said in a briefing note.
An OSTP representative said that without a unified lunar time standard, it would be difficult to guarantee the security of data transfer between spacecraft and the synchronization of communications between Earth, lunar satellites, bases and astronauts. Timing discrepancies could also lead to errors in mapping and positioning on the moon or its orbit, the government official said. He also noted that as commercial activities on the Moon expand, a single time standard will be necessary to coordinate operations, ensure the reliability of transactions, and manage the logistics of lunar commerce.
Determining how coordinated lunar time will be implemented will require international agreements through “existing standardization bodies” and among the 36 signatories of the “Artemis Treaty” pact, which addresses countries’ actions in space and the moon, the statement said. China and Russia, the USA’s main rivals in space, did not sign the “Artemis Agreement”.
As noted, NASA plans to send astronaut missions to the Moon in the coming years within the framework of the “Artemis” program and create a scientific lunar base that can help pave the way for future missions to Mars.
As Ukrinform reported, The American robotic lunar probe Odysseus from Intuitive Machines took the first photographs from the moon and sent them back to Earth as part of the IM-1 mission.
The photo is self-explanatory
Source: Ukrinform
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