Lunar Coordinated Time / LTC is on the way

[GlobalNorth]

The White House has directed NASA to develop a standardized LTC [Lunar Time Coordinated] and subsequent Time Zones for the Moon. How might such a standard affect Amateurs who engage in E-M-E radio transmissions? Private enterprise? Government?

How does a celestial body that effectively does not rotate on its' own axis have designated time zones?

https://www.reuters.com/science/white-house-directs-nasa-create-time-standard-moon-2024-04-02/

 

[ScannerSK]

It appears they want a time standard for the moon not time zones. They want to determine a way for people to tell time or coordinate time with each other, I assume, while living on the moon. What a strange thought.

 

[weyforthr]

A solution looking for a problem...

 

[wtp]

 

[w2xq]

$34T in debt and the WH has nothing better to do than order NASA to develop LTC? Ridiculous.

BTW, Galaxy Time for Galaxy Watches to tell time in our solar system is available in the Google Playstore.

 

[mc48]

More like Lunacy Time.

 

[ka3aaa]

hate to tell the moon does rotate on its own access

 

[GlobalNorth]

Synchronous rotation does not count here.

 

[KC1UA]

I could roll out the Uranus joke again....nah.

 

[BinaryMode]

NASA in January said it has scheduled for September 2026 its first astronaut lunar landing since the end of the Apollo program in the 1970s, with a mission flying four astronauts around the moon and back scheduled for September 2025.

In my humble opinion, not when the U.S. is sending billions over seas...

 

[krokus]

The White House has directed NASA to develop a standardized LTC [Lunar Time Coordinated] and subsequent Time Zones for the Moon. How might such a standard affect Amateurs who engage in E-M-E radio transmissions? Private enterprise? Government?

The way I heard it explained, there would be one timezone for the whole moon. Unless this is done via the scientific standards community, it could be dismissed by anyone other than the US government. If anyone dismissed an internationally accepted standard, it would be odd.

The time on the moon would be irrelevant to EME operations. I'm more curious about how it would affect logging of two way comms between a ham on the moon and a ham on Earth. (Would the moon still have a 24 hour clock? Would they track the planet's timezones, just to know the time "back home" or just Zulu time?)

 

[Omega-TI]

GMT seems good enough to me. There are plenty of people who use if for communications, like HAM's. Leave it to government to try to screw up or complicate matters.

 

[murphcc1]

The time it takes for the Moon to rotate once on its axis is equal to the time it takes for the Moon to orbit once around Earth.

 

[BinaryMode]

From ChatGPT:

"The moon orbits the Earth approximately once every 27.3 days. This period is called a "sidereal month." However, if we measure the moon's orbit based on its phases (from one full moon to the next), it takes about 29.5 days, which is known as a "synodic month." The difference between these two measures arises because Earth is also moving around the sun during the time it takes for the moon to complete one orbit."

 

[BinaryMode]

The key thing here is the word "approximately." I'm thinking this orbit may change from time to time, I think. As a bipedal chimp who's observed the strangeness of the Moon's orbit at night and during the day, I could hardly predict it...

Speaking of chimps... Wouldn't it be cool to go back in time to not only see the discovery of the use of fire for the first time, but when we just looked - up?

And full on disclosure (like it's really needed or anyone should care), I'm a firm believer in science and religion. I'm non-denominational actually. But I digress...


I was just watching what looked liked a pretty cool show on Story Television (like the history channel) about the Moon and what would happen without it. It's almost as if it should be here... Like how I've been saying ever since I was a kid many decades ago that Jupiter was like our solar system's vacuum cleaner so to speak...