Time shapes our lives and we can never escape it. Clocks and alarms we set completely affect our lives. Even if we give up our technology and return to nature, we still have to live dependent on the Earth’s rotation around its axis and its motion around the Sun. Humanity accepts a universal time and time zone in our world.
How does time work when we are in an extraterrestrial place?
Since there are 16 sunsets a day on the International Space Station, the time zone is considered universal time (UT), which is the same as Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).
According to this logic, universal time is also time on the Moon. However, this is not entirely true. Although Artemis III will land on the Moon again or establish more bases, there is no agreement on which time zone to use. Currently, whenever a mission in space is undertaken, the time zone corresponding to the country in which it is carried out is used.
But on the Moon, as on Earth, using the Sun doesn’t work. Because, the time from sunrise to sunset here corresponds to 14.77 Earth days. Previously, a proposal called “Moon Standard Time” was put forward on the Internet. In this suggestion; the seconds, minutes and hours remain the same, considering 24 hours as a cycle, 30 cycles corresponded to a full lunar day, which is roughly correct.
So what time zone did the Apollo astronauts use on the Moon?
The Apollo astronauts had a productive time on the Moon, so why don’t we follow their path? Here is a small problem with this. The title above is actually a trick question. The astronauts did not use any time zones. They used neither UTC nor the time zone of Florida where they were departing from. The astronauts used a time system known as Launch Time History (GET). In this slice, time was counted in minutes, hours, and days from launch.
A lot of things mattered in missions based on the activities that took place at a particular time after takeoff, so it made more sense to use that time rather than a specific time zone. However, this no longer makes much sense for a longer mission to the Moon, so a solution is needed.
The European Space Agency (ESA) has made a call for this to be decided. Although the need for a time zone on the lunar surface for astronauts is not an urgent matter, establishing a communication system around the Moon will make this decision necessary.
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