“As NASA, private companies, and space agencies around the
world launch missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond, it's Important that we
establish celestial time standards for safety and accuracy,” OSTP Deputy
Director for National Security Steve Welby said in a statement.
He noted how “time passes differently” depending on
positions in space, offering the example of how time appears to pass more
slowly where gravity is stronger, such as near celestial bodies.
A consistent definition of time among operators in space is
critical to successful space situational awareness capabilities, navigation,
and communications," Welby said.
The aim, the White House says, is for Coordinate Lunar Time,
or LTC, to be tied to Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), currently the primary
time standard used throughout the world to regulate time on Earth.
The White House directed NASA to work with the Departments
of Commerce, Defense, State and Transportation to deliver a time standard
strategy that will improve navigation and other operations for missions in
particular in cislunar space, the region between Earth and the Moon.
The new standard will focus on four features: traceability
to UTC, accuracy sufficient to support precision navigation and science,
resilience to loss of contact with Earth, and scalability to environments
beyond cislunar space.
There were few technical specifics for establishing a lunar
time standard laid out in the memorandum, but OSTP suggested it could adopt
elements of the existing standard on Earth.
"Just as Terrestrial Time is set through an ensemble of
atomic clocks on Earth, an ensemble of clocks on the Moon might set Lunar
Time," it said.
The United States is planning a return to the Moon in 2026,
humanity's first lunar landing since the Apollo 17 mission in 1972.
AFP