The moon rises beyond a sign in the outfield during the fifth inning of a baseball game between the Kansas City Royals and the Chicago White Sox Wednesday, Aug. 10, 2022, in Kansas City, Missouri. With more lunar missions than ever on the horizon, the European Space Agency wants to give the moon its own time zone. In February 2023, the agency said space organizations around the world are considering how best to keep time on the moon. (AP Photo/

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — With more lunar missions than ever on the horizon, the European Space Agency wants to give the moon its own time zone.

This week, the agency said space organizations around the world are considering how best to keep time on the moon. The idea came up during a meeting in the Netherlands late last year, with participants agreeing on the urgent need to establish “a common lunar reference time,” said the space agency’s Pietro Giordano, a navigation system engineer.

“A joint international effort is now being launched towards achieving this,” Giordano said in a statement.

For now, a moon mission runs on the time of the country that is operating the spacecraft. European space officials said an internationally accepted lunar time zone would make it easier for everyone, especially as more countries and even private companies aim for the moon and NASA gets set to send astronauts there.

NASA had to grapple with the time question while designing and building the International Space Station, fast approaching the 25th anniversary of the launch of its first piece.

While the space station doesn’t have its own time zone, it runs on Coordinated Universal Time, or UTC, which is meticulously based on atomic clocks. That helps to split the time difference between NASA and the Canadian Space Agency, and the other partnering space programs in Russia, Japan and Europe.

The international team looking into lunar time is debating whether a single organization should set and maintain time on the moon, according to the European Space Agency.

There are also technical issues to consider. Clocks run faster on the moon than on Earth, gaining about 56 microseconds each day, the space agency said. Further complicating matters, ticking occurs differently on the lunar surface than in lunar orbit.

Perhaps most importantly, lunar time will have to be practical for astronauts there, noted the space agency’s Bernhard Hufenbach. NASA is shooting for its first flight to the moon with astronauts in more than a half-century in 2024, with a lunar landing as early as 2025.

“This will be quite a challenge” with each day lasting as long as 29.5 Earth days, Hufenbach said in a statement. “But having established a working time system for the moon, we can go on to do the same for other planetary destinations.”

Mars Standard Time, anyone?

Hate your signature? Try plastic surgery for autographs

NEW YORK — Doctors, lawyers, celebrities: There’s a new cosmetic surgery, of sorts, that has snared them all.

By that, we mean handing over money to hire a calligrapher for a fresh take on writing one’s own name in cursive. With a pen or another writing implement. On paper.

A corner of TikTok, Instagram and other social media is dedicated to signature design, and it’s keeping practitioners busy.

Priscilla Molina in Los Angeles does a minimum of 300 custom signatures a month, offering packages that include up to three ways to sign, limitless drafts or a new set of initials. She charges between $10 to $55, using the motto: “Where originality meets legacy.”

Molina said her Planet of Names clients include professionals and famous people in search of new ways to sign autographs, though her lips are sealed on the identities of high-profile signature seekers.

In general, Molina said, people come to her for signature makeovers for a simple reason: They’re tired of the way they sign their names.

“They’re not happy with their signatures. They don’t relate to who they are. They don’t give the message they want to convey to the world,” she said.

Molina and other signature doctors promise a range of styles. For Molina, that includes but is not limited to elegant, subtle, dramatic, sharp, classic, artistic, condensed, curvy, legible — or even illegible.

She and others offer templates and stencils, encouraging clients to practice their newfound John Hancocks, with results in a short couple of weeks if they put in the time.

John Hancock, for those light on U.S. history, was president of the Continental Congress and affixed his large and flamboyant signature to the Declaration of Independence when it was signed in 1776.

Fast forward to 2023, where — despite the rise of digital alternatives — signatures, to some, still matter.

Sonia Palamand in St. Louis, Missouri, began noodling with calligraphy in middle school. She drums up business on TikTok, charging $35 for three signatures while promoting herself in videos that have her designing free of charge for select commenters.

“It’s a way for people to reinvent themselves. The way that you present yourself on the outside can affect how you see yourself on the inside. I think with signatures, it’s adding some intentionality,” she said. “It’s also an artistic pursuit.”

Artistic, for sure, but what happens when a client’s signature must be matched with a signature on file? Think voter rolls, passports, credit cards, health documents, wills, insurance or financial papers.

There’s the option of reverting to an old signature, of course, though some happy customers choose to update their worlds of signatures on file to match the new.

But are the new signatures somehow easier for fraudsters to replicate?

James Green, a certified document examiner who has testified in more than 140 legal cases around the world, went through the customer experience at one of the signature design companies. He paid for a package that included three options.

“At this time, I can’t throw the signature design services under the bus,” he said. “However, the verdict is still out. If clients request a simplistic signature style or limit it to their initials, obviously, the opportunity for fraud increases.”

The company Green used, Signature Pro, provided a writing template to help him become more proficient in signing the new way. Green, in Eugene, said the three samples “could not be easily simulated due to flourishes, spacing, height relationships” and other proportions.