NASA wants a moon clock, where seconds tick away faster

NASA wants to come up with an out-ofthis-world way to keep track of time, putting the moon on its own souped-up clock.

It’s not quite a time zone like those on Earth, but an entire frame of time reference for the moon. Because there’s less gravity on the moon, time there moves a tad quicker — 58.7 microseconds every day — compared with Earth. So, on Tuesday, the White House told NASA and other U.S agencies to work with international agencies to come up with a new moon-centric time reference system.

“An atomic clock on the moon will tick at a different rate than a clock on Earth,”said Kevin Coggins, NASA’s top communications and navigation official.“It makes sense that when you go to another body, like the moon or Mars, that each one gets its own heartbeat.”

So everything on the moon will operate on the faster moon time, Coggins said.

The last time NASA sent astronauts to the moon, they wore watches, but timing wasn’t as precise and critical as it now with GPS, satellites and intricate computer and communications systems, Coggins said.

Last year, the European Space Agency said Earth needs to come up with a unified time for the moon, where a day lasts 29.5 Earth days.

The International Space Station, being in low Earth orbit, will continue to use coordinated universal time, or UTC. But just where the new space time kicks in is something that NASA has to figure out.

The White House wants NASA to come up with a preliminary idea by the end of the year and have a final plan by the end of 2026.