On Mon, Sep 26, 2005 at 02:33:00PM -0400, Daniel R. Tobias wrote:
>
> I would suppose that such a space probe would have little need to be
> synchronized with earthly solar time, and thus might be best off
> operating on TAI, with any adjustments to UTC for the sake of humans
> observing it on Earth being done at the Earthly end of things.
That's the way we do it for interplanetary stuff now. Data from
spacecraft are typically returned in spacecraft clock time (SCLK, which is
pronounced "sclock") and then translated to whatever time base you want it
in. Right now, the clock on Mars Odyssey (as I type this) should be
reading 2/0812228033. Dealing with things like leap seconds, local time
conventions, and other time conversions are all handled here on Earth.
--
Randy Kaelber Randy.Kaelber_at_asu.edu
Scientific Software Engineer
Mars Space Flight Facility, Department of Geological Sciences
Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona, USA
Received on Mon Sep 26 2005 - 12:06:36 PDT