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Interest in the Moon is revived, and a stepping stone to celestial bodies is being reestablished. Space agencies and private companies around the world are planning their own lunar missions in the next few years, and coordinating with each other will be very complicated when using different time zones. At a conference held at the European Space Agency’s ESTEC Technology Center, space organizations spoke about the “importance and urgency of defining a common lunar reference time.”new announcement“A joint international effort to achieve this is now being launched,” said Pietro Giordano, Navigation Systems Engineer at ESA.
Currently, various space organizations use their own time zones for their onboard chronometers and two-way communication systems. ESA said it was “unsustainable” to do so in a new era of lunar exploration. If missions from different nations will jointly make observations and are on the moon at the same time, they may need to communicate with each other without directly cooperating.
However, determining and maintaining lunar hours is not easy and comes with its own set of challenges. As the ESA points out, “precise navigation requires strict timekeeping.” So one of the topics that the international group of space organizations will have to debate is whether there should be a single organization responsible for maintaining the lunar time zone. A decision must be made whether to synchronize the Moon time with the Earth time. There are many factors to consider, but they must ultimately be practical for astronauts who orbit or step on the surface of the moon.
Bernhard Hufenbach, member of the Moonlight Management Team at ESA’s Office of Human and Robotic Exploration, said: But now that we’ve established a working time system for the Moon, we can do the same for other planetary destinations.
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