3 ms·

How exactly would you ensure nanosecond accuracy of time between earth and mars? Does Nasa just run ntp back to earth? Or really expensive atomic clocks made ou

• blablabla123 6y ago
  Assuming this is not an April Fools joke, I guess you wouldn't. Probably during travel measurable relativistic time difference has already set in and the nanosecond sync to earth might already differ by that. (If you manage to sync with ns precision anyways, that would be more an earth-like time/clock :)) Also days are a bit longer on Mars so it would be possible to keep in sync with local days. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafele–Keating_experiment https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hafele–Keating_experiment
  • zokier 6y ago
    I don't think relativistic effects are that great of a problem; I'd imagine that we know the orbital and gravitational characteristics well enough to do pretty decent compensation for relativity. That being said, nanosecond accuracy might be out of our reach, considering that it's bit of a challenge to get that level of accuracy on even on Earth. Also shipping atomic clocks to space is not all that outrageous idea. Few years ago NASA lauched Deep Space Atomic Clock[1], which is exactly what it sounds like. Also modern "chip scale" atomic clocks[2] are pretty small and low power, so I would not be surprised to see those in future missions. [1] https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/tdm/clock/index.html https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/tdm/clock/index.html [2] https://www.microsemi.com/product-directory/embedded-clocks-frequency-references/5207-space-csac https://www.microsemi.com/product-directory/embedded-clocks-...