{"id":22352,"date":"2024-04-10T04:16:40","date_gmt":"2024-04-09T22:46:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/?p=22352"},"modified":"2025-10-08T11:39:49","modified_gmt":"2025-10-08T06:09:49","slug":"coordinated-lunar-time-ltc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/coordinated-lunar-time-ltc\/","title":{"rendered":"Coordinated Lunar Time (LTC)"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2>About Coordinated Lunar Time (LTC)<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>It will provide a <strong>time-keeping benchmark<\/strong> for lunar spacecraft and <a href=\"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/upsc-exam\/types-of-satellite\/\" target=\"_blank\">satellites<\/a> that require extreme precision for their missions.<\/li>\n<li>It will also <strong>synchronise <\/strong>the communication between satellites, astronauts, bases and the Earth.<\/li>\n<li>A unified time standard would be essential for coordinating operations, ensuring the reliability of transactions and managing the logistics of lunar commerce.<\/li>\n<li><strong>Why there is need of LTC?<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>As there is less gravity on the Moon, time <strong>ticks slightly faster<\/strong> there relative to the time on the Earth.<\/li>\n<li>In other words, for someone on the Moon, an Earth-based clock will appear to lose on average 58.7 microseconds per Earth day with \u201cadditional periodic variations.<\/li>\n<li>It can <strong>create problems<\/strong> for situations such as a spacecraft seeking to dock on the Moon, <strong>data transferring<\/strong> at a specific time, <strong>communication, and navigation.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>How does Earth\u2019s time standard work?<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Most of the clocks and time zones of the world are based on <strong>Coordinated Universal Time<\/strong> (UTC) which is essentially an internationally agreed upon standard for world time.<\/li>\n<li>It is set by the <strong>International Bureau of Weights and Measures<\/strong> in Paris, France.<\/li>\n<li>It is tracked by a weighted average of more than 400 atomic clocks placed in different parts of the globe.\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Atomic clocks<\/strong> measure time in terms of the <strong>resonant frequencies<\/strong> \u2014 the natural frequency of an object where it tends to vibrate at a higher amplitude \u2014 of atoms such as <strong>cesium-133.<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>In atomic time, a second is defined as the period in which a caesium atom vibrates 9,192,631,770 times. As the vibration rates at which atoms absorb energy are highly stable and ultra-accurate, atomic clocks make for an excellent device for gauging the passage of time.<\/li>\n<li>To obtain their local time, countries need to subtract or add a certain number of hours from UTC depending on how many time zones they are away <strong>from 0 degree longitude meridian<\/strong>, also known as the Greenwich meridian.<\/li>\n<li>If a country lies on the <strong>west of the Greenwich meridian<\/strong>, it has to <strong>subtract<\/strong> from the UTC, and if a country is located on the <strong>east of the meridian,<\/strong> it has <strong>to add.<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<hr \/>\n<h3>Q: What Is Greenwich meridian?<\/h3>\n<p>It is an imaginary line, last established in 1851, that was used to indicate 0\u00b0 longitude. It passes through Greenwich, a borough of London, and terminates at the North and South poles. Because it indicated 0\u00b0 longitude, it was also known as the prime meridian.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Source:<\/strong> <a href=\"https:\/\/indianexpress.com\/article\/explained\/explained-sci-tech\/new-3-d-map-universe-nature-dark-energy-9260670\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><u>How and why US wants to establish a time standard for the Moon<\/u><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Coordinated Lunar Time (LTC) will provide a time-keeping benchmark for lunar spacecraft and satellites that require extreme precision for their missions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":22353,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-22352","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-upsc-prelims-current-affairs","8":"no-featured-image-padding"},"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22352","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22352\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/22353"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vajiramandravi.com\/current-affairs\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}