On July 21, 1969, Neil Armstrong took that first fateful step onto the Moon.
"These missions will not only be on or around the Moon at the same time, but they will often be interacting as well – potentially relaying communications for one another, performing joint observations or carrying out rendezvous operations,"Historically, every mission that has gone to the Moon has used the atomic clocks on Earth to track their progress, synchronizing their time in space with their time on Earth.
A normal old clock on board a spacecraft simply won't do the trick. The forces of gravity and velocity are different on the Moon, which means they impact time in different ways than the forces nearer our own planet. Under these complex conditions, stable timekeeping set specifically to the Moon will be tricky to establish, but it could be more accurate and faster than synchronizing with Earth time.The latter scenario will require putting together a working lunar time system and a common coordinate system for the surface of the Moon, like what we use on Earth to track orbiting satellites.
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