A new White House policy instructs NASA to develop a strategy for a new time standard for use on cislunar missions to provide improved navigation and related services on and around the moon. The Policy on Celestial Time Standardization in Support of the National Cislunar Science and Technology Strategy, released by the White House\u2019s Office of Science and Technology Policy April 2, directs NASA to develop a strategy by the end of 2026 to create Coordinated Lunar Time (LTC), a new time standard based on Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) on Earth but adapted to operations on the moon. \u201cAs NASA, private companies and space agencies around the world launch missions to the Moon, Mars and beyond, it\u2019s important that we establish celestial time standards for safety and accuracy,\u201d Steve Welby, OSTP deputy director for national security, said in a statement. Simply using UTC in cislunar space in adequate for precision operations, the policy notes. UTC is tied to Earth-based systems, but relativistic effects mean a second on the moon is not the same length as one on Earth. \u201cFor example, to an observer on the Moon, an Earth-based clock will appear to lose on average 58.7 microseconds per Earth-day with additional periodic variations,\u201d the policy states. While that difference is imperceptible for most applications \u2014 it would take nearly 50 years to build up a one-second offset \u2014 it is a problem for navigation and related applications, like space situational awareness and proximity operations, where higher precision is required. \u201cA consistent definition of time among operators in space is critical to successful space situational awareness capabilities, navigation and communications, all of which are foundational to enable interoperability across the U.S. government and with international partners,\u201d Welby said. The policy sets four major features for LTC: traceability to UTC, accuracy sufficient for precision navigation and science, resilience to loss of contact with Earth and scalability to environments beyond cislunar space. The policy provides little technical guidance for establishing a lunar time standard but suggests it may be done like terrestrial time standards, which use a network of atomic clocks. \u201cJust as Terrestrial Time is set through an ensemble of atomic clocks on Earth, an ensemble of clocks on the Moon might set Lunar Time,\u201d it states. Besides providing a finalized strategy for a lunar time standard to the White House by the end of 2026, the policy directs NASA to also include the topic in its annual cycle of reviews of its Moon to Mars Architecture, which it unveiled nearly a year ago and updated earlier this year. NASA will work with several other agencies, including the Departments of Commerce, Defense, State and Transportation, on the lunar time strategy. NASA has been working on a concept called LunaNet to provide communications and navigation services at the moon using an interoperable network that could include commercial and international contributions. NASA and the European Space Agency have produced several versions of a LunaNet Interoperability Specification that mentions the creation of a Lunar Time System Standard, although documentation for that has not been developed. In May 2023, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) announced it was working with NASA to develop a positioning and navigation system for the moon. The goal, NGA officials said then, was to create a system for users on the moon that works \u201cas accurately and as safely as GPS does on Earth.\u201d That announcement did not go into details about creating a lunar time standard.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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