White House asks NASA to create time standard for the Moon: Report

The European Space Agency in 2023 had announced similar plans to give the Moon its own time zone. The idea came up during a meeting between people from various space agencies in Netherlands in late 2022, according to AP. The participants in the meeting agreed on the urgent need for a common lunar reference time.

This question of setting time in space was something that NASA has dealt with in the past already. That was for the International Space Station. While ISS does not exactly have its own time zone, it runs on Coordinated Universal Time or UTC, which is a standard kept meticulously by atomic clocks. Using UTC is a compromise between the the united States, Russia, Japan and Europe; all partners in the ISS program.

Apart from international issue, there are some technical incidents to run. Because of its gravity is weaker than that on Earth, Clocks will run faster there, gaining around 56 microseconds every day. Then there is the question of the day — one day on the Moon lasts about 29.5 Earth days. So NASA and other organisations working on a “Coordinated Lunar Time” or the “Lunar Standard Time”