With lunar traffic increasing among several nations, a standard lunar time becomes valuable to all parties. But will the Chinese defer to an American standard?
A memo Tuesday from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy outlines the Biden administration’s desire “to establish time standards at and around celestial bodies other than Earth” and instructs the space agency to “develop celestial time standardization with an initial focus on the lunar surface” by December 2026.
The unified time standard will be known as “Coordinated Lunar Time (LTC),” the memo says.
A standardized time reference is needed because the moon has a weaker gravitational pull than Earth due to its smaller mass, meaning that time moves slightly faster on the moon than on Earth — on average, 58.7 microseconds per day, “with additional periodic variations,” the memo says.
The project, first reported by Reuters, will be important because “knowledge of time … is fundamental to the scientific discovery, economic development, and international collaboration that form the basis of U.S. leadership in space,” the memo said.
“The clocks run faster on the moon,” Catherine Heymans, the astronomer royal for Scotland and a professor of astrophysics at the University of Edinburgh, said in an interview. “This is one of the beauties of fundamental physics — crazy things happen.”
Heymans explained that “the way we define time on planet Earth is with an atomic clock.” Atomic clocks are affected by gravity, which means “if you took that same atomic clock up to the moon, then in 50 years it would be one second faster than the atomic clock on Earth.”
In March, NASA engineers sent a command prompt, or "poke," to the craft to get a readout from its flight data subsystem (FDS) — which packages Voyager 1's science and engineering data before beaming it back to Earth.
After decoding the spacecraft's response, the engineers have found the source of the problem: The FDS's memory has been corrupted.
"The team suspects that a single chip responsible for storing part of the affected portion of the FDS memory isn't working," NASA said in a blog post Wednesday (March 13). "Engineers can't determine with certainty what caused the issue. Two possibilities are that the chip could have been hit by an energetic particle from space or that it simply may have worn out after 46 years."
Although it may take several months, the engineers say they can find a workaround to run the FDS without the fried chip — restoring the spacecraft's messaging output and enabling it to continue to send readable information from outside our solar system.
“A genuine space success story,” is how Experiments Manager William Kerslake described NASA’s second Space Electric Rocket Test (SERT II), the first long-duration operation of ion thrusters in space. SERT II provided researchers with data for years beyond its expected lifetime and was a rare example of an entire mission – including the launch, propulsion system, spacecraft, and control center – being handled by one organization: NASA’s Lewis Research Center in Cleveland (today, NASA Glenn).
The concept of electric propulsion thrusters dates back to the early 20th century, but because they must operate in a vacuum, there was no practical application for these systems until the space program decades later. In the late 1950s, researchers at NASA Lewis began investigating types of electric propulsion and analyzing missions that could use these systems. They produce low amounts of thrust by creating and accelerating small particles at high velocities, and over time, can accelerate spacecraft at very high rates of speed. Their ability to operate continuously for years at a time with little propellant makes them ideal for long-duration missions or keeping satellites in orbit.
My father said that anything is interesting if you bother to read about it - Michael C. Harrold
The mysterious object that crashed through the roof of a Florida home last month did indeed come from the International Space Station (ISS), NASA has confirmed.
That home, in the seaside city of Naples, belongs to Alejandro Otero. Shortly after the March 8 incident, Otero said he thought the offending object was part of a cargo pallet packed with 5,800 pounds (2,630 kilograms) of aging batteries jettisoned from the ISS in March 2021.
And he was right, according to a new NASA analysis of the object, which was performed at Florida's Kennedy Space Center.
"Based on the examination, the agency determined the debris to be a stanchion from the NASA flight support equipment used to mount the batteries on the cargo pallet," agency officials wrote in an update today (April 15).
The cylindrical piece of space junk is made of a metallic alloy called Inconel, they added. It weighs 1.6 pounds (0.7 kg) and measures 4 inches (10 centimeters) high by 1.6 inches (4 cm) wide.
My father said that anything is interesting if you bother to read about it - Michael C. Harrold
Most planets in our solar system rotate counterclockwise on their axes, but Venus rotates clockwise, making it the only planet to do so. Not only that, but its rotation is incredibly slow, with one day on Venus lasting longer than one year on Venus!
with one day on Venus lasting longer than one year on Venus!
Wait what?
--------------------------------------------
I am Dyslexic of Borg, prepare to have your ass laminated.
I guess Ray Butts has ate his last pancake. http://steamcommunity.com/id/daehawk
"Has high IQ. Refuses to apply it"
--------------------------------------------
I am Dyslexic of Borg, prepare to have your ass laminated.
I guess Ray Butts has ate his last pancake. http://steamcommunity.com/id/daehawk
"Has high IQ. Refuses to apply it"
This is not your average NASA mission control team. I'm sure all the original Voyager people are retired or dead, but now their successors are looking long in the tooth.
n a recent update to the NASA Advisory Council Human Exploration and Operations Committee, the agency provided updates on several key aspects of the Artemis I through IV missions. This included updates on Starship timelines and efforts as SpaceX readies to conduct the final tests of the fourth Starship Flight Test.
Amit Kshatriya, Deputy Associate Administrator of NASA’s Moon to Mars program, elaborated on the agency’s observed progress of the Human Landing System (HLS) efforts undertaken by SpaceX.
Starship is contracted to be the designated landing system for the Artemis III mission. The planned mission for September 2026 aims to return humans to the surface of the Moon and would be the first crewed lunar landing since Apollo 17 in December 1972.
In March 2024, the company conducted another test flight of the Starship system as part of its development program to move Starship to operational status. NASA noted they have been encouraged by the progress made on Flight 3.
“They (SpaceX) conducted their third integrated flight test and successfully completed a full-duration burn during ascent. So that was a significant milestone.
“In addition, SpaceX and NASA recently performed full-scale qualification testing of the docking system that will connect the Starship human landing system with Orion and, later in future missions, with Gateway on those missions.”
The docking system is a critical element that will be utilized to dock with the crewed Orion capsule after it is launched by an SLS rocket to bring the crew down to the surface of the Moon.
Regarding future flights of Starship, NASA indicated that SpaceX has already analyzed the data from the March test flight and implemented numerous corrective measures to Flight 4’s stack of Ship 29 and Booster 11.
This launch is planned for as early as May but no later than the end of May.
Kshatriya then expanded the discussion beyond the next few Starship flights and talked about the required technologies for a fuel depot in orbit and the in-orbit capabilities needed to transfer fuel.
“We need an instance of the ship that is essentially long, has the endurance to stay in orbit long enough for the sequence to work.
“So, we need a ship that has at least three to four weeks of endurance in orbit. That endurance is gained through augmented power system capability, augmented battery capacity, full insulation of the cryogenic systems, vacuum jacketing of all the lines, et cetera, to make sure that the cryogens that are being stored or are meant to be stored don’t boil off.”
Artist rendering of Starbase with the two towers needed for this test flight.
My father said that anything is interesting if you bother to read about it - Michael C. Harrold
