Get over IST, Moon could have its own time zone

With missions rushing to the Moon and countries planning to establish a base on the lunar surface to push forward to Mars, astronomers are contemplating giving the moon its own time zone. Space organisations have begun considering how to keep time on the Moon and the European Space Agency is leading that front with discussions ranging on a larger effort to agree on a common ‘LunaNet’ architecture covering lunar communication and navigation services. So far, missions launched to the Moon operate on their own timescale exported from Earth, with deep space antennas used to keep onboard chronometers synchronised with terrestrial time to ensure proper two-way communications. The European Space Agency is also developing a lunar communications and navigation service that will allow missions to maintain links to and from Earth, and guide them on their way around the moon and on the surface, allowing them to focus on their core tasks. "The experience of this success can be re-used for the technical long-term lunar systems to come, even though stable timekeeping on the Moon will throw up its own unique challenges – such as taking into account the fact that time passes at a different rate there due to the Moon's specific gravity and velocity effects,” J¶rg Hahn, ESA’s chief Galileo engineer, said in a statement.