lunartime.org

Organization

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

United States civil space agency; it says it will develop a lunar time standard for its missions and for LunaNet.

At a glance

Every value in this table comes from the entry in our organizations registry; the links below lead to the pages it connects to.
FieldValue
Short nameNASA
TypeSpace agency
BasedUnited States
Address we linkwww.nasa.gov
TrackerUnited States — NASA and OSTP
Documents on this site1 document
Papers on this siteNone yet
Facts on this page5, each with its own source

Key facts

  • A White House memorandum of 2 April 2024 directs NASA, with the Departments of Commerce, Defense, State and Transportation, to deliver a finalized lunar time implementation strategy no later than 31 December 2026. [1]Official
  • The same memorandum sets four features for any new celestial time standard: traceability to UTC, accuracy for precision navigation, resilience to loss of contact with Earth, and scalability beyond the Earth-Moon system. [1]Official
  • A companion memorandum of 18 December 2024 asks NASA for an implementation plan for lunar reference systems, also no later than 31 December 2026. [2]Official
  • NASA's own announcement of the work quotes a model figure of about 56 microseconds per day for a lunar clock against an Earth clock. [3]Official
  • NASA's architecture update of 27 February 2026 makes Artemis III a 2027 test in low Earth orbit and places the Artemis IV landing in 2028. [4]Official

In short

NASA holds the deadline that makes lunar time a dated question rather than an open one. Two 2024 memoranda from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy direct the agency to define Coordinated Lunar Time and to deliver a finalized implementation strategy, both by the end of 2026. The agency has announced the work and quoted a model rate figure for it, but it has not published the strategy, and no lunar clock has been run.

Every clock value on this site is a model value computed from published rate figures: no lunar time scale has been realized, and nothing on this page is a reading taken from a clock on the Moon[5]Official. The record itself sits inthe list of organizations, and the wider background is inwhat Coordinated Lunar Time is.

What it decides

  1. What the United States will propose as the practical lunar time standard, and on what schedule.
  2. How that standard stays traceable to UTC while surviving loss of contact with Earth.
  3. Whether LunaNet and the Artemis architecture carry one time reference or several.

Where this record connects

Documents

Missions and programmes it runs

On the tracker

Other organizations

Sources

  1. Policy on Celestial Time Standardization — White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, . Official document. Verified .
  2. Policy on Standardization of Lunar Reference Systems in Support of the National Cislunar Science & Technology Strategy — White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, . Official document. Verified .
  3. NASA to Develop Lunar Time Standard for Exploration Initiatives — NASA, . Official document. Verified .
  4. NASA Adds Mission to Artemis Lunar Program, Updates Architecture — NASA, . Official document. Verified .
  5. Resolution on the establishment of a coordinated lunar time standard by international agreement — International Astronomical Union, Commission A3 — XXXII General Assembly, . Official document. Verified .

Last verified