With NASA planning to return to the moon, and with long-range plans to build a base of some kind there, the moon needs to keep time. Physicists at the National Institutes of Standards and Technology have created Coordinated Lunar Time, or "Moon Time," for the purposes of timekeeping on the lunar surface. The time will have nothing to do with the length of a lunar day, which is a month long, and there will be only one lunar time zone. So why do they need a special time system for the moon? Wouldn't it just be easier to coordinate the time with Houston?
It's because timekeeping is about a lot more than just scheduling a wakeup call from ground control. Clocks on the moon will be used to calculate locations, like GPS does on earth. Despite the fact that satellite clocks are some of the most precise clocks ever developed, they still lose a little time relative to earth because of their speed and the influence (or lack thereof) of gravity. In other words, time moves slower in space. Low-orbit satellites are launched with software that takes these effects into account, but the moon's distance will require a different system to keep lunar time working the way it should. The importance of Coordinated Lunar Time is explained in greater detail at Atlas Obscura.
(Image credit: Airwolfhound)
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