How Fast Does Time Pass on the Moon? NASA Has a New Answer

Amid international efforts to create a special time zone for the moon, NASA researchers have calculated with new precision how Einstein’s theory of relativity makes time pass faster on the moon.

Determining a globally accepted reference time for the moon is of great importance as NASA prepares for the return of Americans to the moon after a 50-year absence, and China plans its own corresponding mission by the end of the decade.

For this reason, an international effort is already underway to agree on a common standard that will allow missions from different countries to communicate with each other.

Currently, each mission to the Moon uses the time of the country that launched the vehicle, a practice that can make it difficult to organize joint missions or coordinate between missions of different origins.

The problem is that time passes faster on the Moon than on Earth. According to general relativity, gravity dilates time.

Since the Moon’s gravitational field is 6 times weaker than Earth’s, an observer on Earth would see a clock on the Moon running faster than his own.

For the same reason, time moves faster for a spacecraft orbiting the Moon than for a clock on its surface, which can lead to discrepancies.

The new study, conducted by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), has not yet undergone independent peer review and is being submitted as a pre-publication in the repository. ArcxivIt is calculated that relative to Earth, the clock on the Moon would advance by 0.0000575 seconds per day.

This means that a person who spends 80 years on the moon would be 1.68 seconds older than if he lived on Earth.

Similar calculations are needed to calculate time on other bodies in the solar system.

After determining the reference time of the Moon, it is likely to be the turn of Mars.