The administration of the President of the United States expressed the intention to instruct NASA to develop a plan for the implementation of coordinated lunar time (Coordinated Lunar Time, LTC) by the end of 2026.
The goal of this plan is to create a single time standard on the Moon that will function as a reference for lunar spacecraft and satellites. The head of NASA's space communication and navigation department, Kevin Coggins, explained that time will pass on the moon at a different speed than on Earth.
The White House brief states that for a person on the moon, Earth's clock would lose an average of 58.7 microseconds per day, and there are other deviations that make lunar time even more distant from Earth's. The lack of a standard can make it difficult to transfer data between spacecraft and synchronize communications between Earth, satellites, bases and astronauts.
