NASA and its international partners are looking to develop a new “time scale” specifically for lunar operations. NASA has been tasked with creating a lunar timekeeping system by a White House directive, aiming for implementation by the end of 2026. The new framework is expected to be foundational for future lunar exploration.

Chief scientist at The Planetary Society, Dr. Bruce Betts, said, “Darn that Einstein guy — he came up with general relativity, and many strange things come out of it.”

Betts added, “It’s just a very, very different concept” on the moon, “And (NASA is) talking about landing astronauts in the very interesting south polar region (of the moon), where you have permanently lit and permanently shadowed areas. So, that’s a whole other set of confusion.”

The lunar environment presents unique challenges; astronauts will experience extended periods of sunlight and darkness, complicating their understanding of time. Current systems on Earth, like Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), rely on atomic clocks, which have been calibrated to account for slight variations in time due to gravity.

Scientists are exploring various clock technologies for lunar deployment, including atomic clocks and crystal oscillators. The goal is to ensure that lunar clocks can maintain precise time while also being synchronized with Earth time.

Lunar position, navigation, and timing and standards lead at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, Cheryl Gramling said, “The beauty of creating a time scale from scratch is that scientists can take everything they have learned about timekeeping on Earth and apply it to a new system on the moon.”

Gramling added, “We are very much looking at executing this on the moon, learning what we can learn,” and added, “so that we are prepared to do the same thing on Mars or other future bodies.”

Successfully establishing a lunar timekeeping system would reportedly pave the way for deeper space exploration, including missions to Mars. By learning from lunar timekeeping, scientists hope to apply these lessons to future endeavors beyond the moon.