The time will be known as Coordinated Lunar Time (Image: Getty)
The Moon will get its own time zone by the end of 2026.
Nasa has been instructed by the White House to create a ‘unified lunar time standard’, which will be known as the Coordinated Lunar Time, or LTC (not CLT, confusingly).
At the moment, when countries land on the Moon, they generally use their own time zone. However, not only does that make international missions tricky, time also works differently on the Moon.
This is because the Moon has a lower gravity, and where there is less gravity, time passes quicker.
For a person on the Moon, an Earth-based clock will appear to lose an average of 58.7 microseconds per Earth day, the head of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP), Dr Arati Prabhakar said, announcing the plans.
She added that other periodic variations would cause Moon time to drift further from Earth time.
However, having a time zone on the Moon would create a system for a time-keeping benchmark for lunar spacecraft and satellites that require extreme precision for their missions.
‘An atomic clock on the moon will tick at a different rate than a clock on Earth,’ said Kevin Coggins, Nasa’s top communications and navigation official.
‘It makes sense that when you go to another body, like the Moon or Mars, that each one gets its own heartbeat.’
Time works differently on the Moon (Image: Getty)
Dr Prabhakar said: ‘At the Moon, synchronising each lunar asset with an Earth-based time standard is difficult – due to relativistic effects, events that appear simultaneous at the Earth (for example, the start of a broadcast signal) are not simultaneous to an observer at the Moon.’
Nasa has plans to send astronauts to the lunar surface from September 2026 through its Artemis programme, with the hopes that the US can establish a scientific lunar base that could help set the stage for future missions to Mars.
An OSTP official told Reuters that without a unified lunar time standard, it would be difficult to make sure that data transfers between spacecraft are secure and that communications between Earth, lunar satellites, bases and astronauts are synchronised.
The differences in time also could lead to errors in mapping and locating positions on or orbiting the Moon.
The official said: ‘Imagine if the world wasn’t syncing their clocks to the same time – how disruptive that might be and how challenging everyday things become.’
Clocks and time zones on Earth operate on Universal Coordinated Time (UTC), which is internationally recognised.
But it relies on a vast global network of atomic clocks placed in different locations around the world to measure changes in the state of atoms which creates an average to make a precise time.
How does an atomic clock work?
An atomic clock works using atoms, counting the frequency with which they oscillate (vibrate) and counting how many times the move back and forth like a pendulum. They move with extreme accuracy, meaning exactly the same number of oscillations will occur within a particular amount of time.
Developing LTC may require atomic clocks to be placed on the Moon.
Creating a standard lunar time was also proposed by the European Space Agency last year, where they suggested that a lunar day should last 29.5 Earth days and to create a common ‘LunaNet’ to cover lunar communication and navigation.
At the time, ESA navigation system engineer Pietro Giordano said: ‘During this meeting at ESTEC [the European Space Research and Technology Centre], we agreed on the importance and urgency of defining a common lunar reference time, which is internationally accepted and towards which all lunar systems and users may refer to.’
However, implementing Coordinated Lunar Time will need international agreements, the memo said, through ‘existing standards bodies’ and among the 36 nations that have signed a pact called the Artemis Accords, which regulates how countries can act in space and on the Moon.
China and Russia, the two main rivals to the US in space, have not signed the Artemis Accords.