A Relativistic Framework to Establish Coordinate Time on the Moon and Beyond

As a software engineer, I would like to add that we are done dealing with time and dates and Martians and Moonfolk better pick UTC and shut up or they aren’t touching the database.

I can appreciate the thought experiment that is coming up with a framework for interplanetary timezones because some people probably enjoy the challenge.

Simultaneously I posit that it’s ambitious as fuck to assume that humanity is going to get off this rock before we burn it to the ground, or to assume that whoever gets off this rock will have enough people and resources to start a society that can grow while the society on Earth also survives.

Furthermore, as a software engineer, I say no thank you. Earth and other planets will function off of digital systems that never EVER communicate with each other, and we will be happy that way

As humanity aspires to explore the solar system and investigate distant worlds such as the Moon, Mars, and beyond, there is a growing need to establish and broaden coordinate time references that depend on the rate of standard clocks. According to Einstein's theory of relativity, the rate of a standard clock is influenced by the gravitational potential at the location of the clock and the relative motion of the clock. A coordinate time reference is established by a grid of synchronized clocks traceable to an ideal clock at a predetermined point in space. This allows for the comparison of local time variations of clocks due to gravitational and kinematic effects. We present a relativistic framework to introduce a coordinate time for the Moon. This framework also establishes a relationship between the coordinate times for the Moon and the Earth as determined by standard clocks located on the Earth's geoid and the Moon's equator. A clock near the Moon's equator ticks faster than one near the Earth's equator, accumulating an extra 56.02 microseconds per day over the duration of a lunar orbit. This formalism is then used to compute the clock rates at Earth-Moon Lagrange points. Accurate estimation of the rate differences of coordinate times across celestial bodies and their inter-comparisons using clocks onboard orbiters at relatively stable Lagrange points as time transfer links is crucial for establishing reliable communications infrastructure. This understanding also underpins precise navigation in cislunar space and on celestial bodies' surfaces, thus playing a pivotal role in ensuring the interoperability of various position, navigation, and timing (PNT) systems spanning from Earth to the Moon and to the farthest regions of the inner solar system.