Technology @beehaw.org VITecNet @programming.dev 3 wk. ago

NASA to Develop Lunar Time Standard for Exploration Initiatives

www.nasa.gov NASA to Develop Lunar Time Standard for Exploration Initiatives - NASA

NASA will coordinate with U.S. government stakeholders, partners, and international standards organizations to establish a Coordinated Lunar Time (LTC)

8 comments

Will the clocks still go back and forward an hour to help the farmers get up early though?
Isn’t UTC meant to be… you know, universal?
- No time is universal because time moves at different speeds under different gravity. The point of this initiative is to be able to accurately measure time in the moon's lower gravity.
  
  Yeah, the time drift between the earth and moon is small, but it'll noticable for latency-sensitive software.
  
  God, I'd hate to be the dev that has to deal with relativistic time zone conversions. What a fucking nightmare that'd be...
Will your lunar server have the UTC or LTC clock?

I'm trying to understand the use case.
Day + night on the Luna have length of ~ 30 days.
- Time moves at a different speed due to the moon's reduced gravity. It's not just the length of a day.
  
  I'd assume that's already a bigger problem for satellites in geostationary orbit then?

You've viewed 8 comments.