On July 21, 1969, Neil Armstrong took the first important step on the moon. The decisive moment was when our planet’s standard universal time reached 02:56. But what time is it for Neal? There is currently no answer to this question, but with current plans to colonize the Moon this may need to change. At a recent meeting in the Netherlands, members of space agencies around the world agreed that we should implement an accurate lunar time zone – a common internationally recognized lunar time that all future missions can use for communication and easy navigation.

“A joint international effort is currently underway to achieve this,” says Pietro Giordano, navigation system engineer at the European Space Agency (ESA).

A meeting led by researchers from ESA was recently held in the Netherlands, but the discussion was highly collaborative. The goal is to create a coherent framework called LunaNet that will provide a common interface for all future lunar missions and optimize the way they network, navigate, detect, inform and communicate.

Timing will be crucial for these future operations.

In the next few years, several robotic landers will be sent to the moon from various space organizations and private companies. At most, ESA, NASA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) are working together to create an orbital lunar station called Gateway through which future expeditions can be launched.

“These missions will not only be on or around the Moon simultaneously, but also interact frequently – potentially communicating with each other, performing joint observations or rendezvous operations,” ESA said in a press release.

Historically, every mission to the Moon used an atomic clock on Earth to track its progress and synchronized its time in space with time on Earth.

Essentially, this involves “radioing home” and asking people on Earth what time it is and accounting for the time it takes to make that call. A normal old clock on a spaceship is useless. The forces of gravity and velocity on the Moon are different, which means they affect time differently than forces closer to our planet.

In practice, this means that if a lunar astronaut brought a clock with him from Earth, he would run tens of microseconds a day faster than usual. Which speed depends on whether the astronaut is in orbit or on the moon itself.

Under these difficult conditions, it would be difficult to create a fixed set of time specific to the Moon, but it may be more accurate and faster than synchronizing with Earth time. This is what scientists are currently debating. Shall we switch to earth time or to lunar clock?

The second scenario would require the creation of a Moon time system and a common coordinate system for the lunar surface that works similarly to the one we use to track satellites orbiting Earth. This may require more energy and effort, but may lead to a much more accurate system that can then be applied to other planets.