What's the time on the moon?
15 January, 2025From "Timekeeping on the Moon on Wikipedia:
As more countries are active on the Moon and interact with each other, a different, unified system will be needed.
Artemis will probably never get to the moon, but NASA are working on Co-ordinated Lunar Time, following some interesting work by the European Space Agency in 2023.
The interesting point of this will be not how it syncs with Earth, but will it have 24 hours? This guy has just spent a year living on a week of 6 days, 28 hours each and guess what - it works for him! It well may be that with different orbital parameters these different durations of what a "day" is make complete sense. On the International Space Station they've replicated the 24 hour day, but of course because they orbit the Earth once every 90 minutes they've had to artificially create a "morning" and "night" - a problem that will also exist for any base on the moon where one night and day takes ~30 Earth days! But if we're providing artificial days and nights then that gives us space to tinker with the duration of periods of light and dark to suit our circadian rhythms with minimal effort, but with more effort via entrainment we can alter those rhythms to better suit the environment. Fascinating!
OK, while you're pondering how many hands your new watch will need, read this great tale about Britain's same-day entry and exit from the club of countries which have independently launched satellites.