My nephew asked-the world is made up of several time zones ,but what time is it in space?

There is no time on space. Our time is based on the Earth's rotation, which equates to a 24 hour clock. On a planet such as Jupiter, the rotation is much longer than that, and on Mercury, it is much shorter. Our time zones work for us as a way of regulating our life cycles around the sun. If there is no sun, there is no time. I suppose you would just set your watch to Earth time since it's the only reference that you would recognize.

Whoa how cool is your nephew coming up with such a fundamental question. Time as in time zones is attributable to GMT and is dependant on the earths rotation around the sun once you leave the earth and travel to a planet the time will still be relevant to our sun but years will be shorter as you go inwards and longer as you go outwards. The point is in space whilst you are still within our solar system will be dependant on your distant from our sun same as the planets. This could be calculated in terms of earth based units eg one day (one rotation of a planet) on earth= 3 days on mars (probably not and accurate calculation!) one year on earth is 2 years on mars (again probably not accurate) when you enter another solar system it will based on the new sun and earth based calculations cease to be relevant. Other considerations are based in relativity and then things start to get really weird and highly theoretical but seriously top marks to your nephew! How old is he? You might want to try getting him to send an email to NASA or the European space agency, If I can get hold of him I'll try and ask my father in law he was quite literally was a rocket scientist for Arianne, if a get an answer I'll try and post something

Time zones were created so that time on Earth would be relative to the position of the sun. So that at 12 noon, the sun would be over head in all time zones. In space, there are no time zones, so time is the same wherever you are in space.

Time on Earth has been subject to the working times that we as human beings with the sunlight to work. Therefore we work in the day and sleep in the night and each time zone is dedicated to the concept of when the sun rises and when it sets. Therefore in space time would be relative to the zone on earth that you are currently over, if you are over Boston then you would be following the Eastern time zone etc.

There is only one TIME, that is time that came in to being since the big bang or whatever it was that caused the beginning of the universe.

All other ideas of time are only local to area of space that you inhabit . this "local" time is measured by the rotation of of planets about their axis and the planet in relation to their suns etc. or even just the way the sun makes a shadow over a sundial in your garden.

You cant be sure about the amount of time passed since the start of the universe because things were very different then, no suns planets as we have now, and there was nobody to measure it anyway.

The Space Time is actually called Universal Time, or UT for short and it is just a fancier form of GMT (greenwich mean time) unlike Britiain it does not have Daylight Savings so that is permanently on GMT even if Britian goes to BST (British Summer Time)

T minus 30 seconds and counting ----

Lift off !!!!!!

T plus 30 seconds into flight and we have separation. Stand by for second burn at t plus 10 minutes.

Time being relative, there is no measured "time". Mission time is logged and planned so that the world and all associated listening and radar posts can syncronize. Launch is of course that of the eastern time associated and "hacked"to the world for knowledge.

My guess is Mission time for the world and the astronauts local eastern time for those who want to, and GMT for Greenwich Mean Time.

time zones are relative to the position of the sun in the sky while on earth. In space it is possible to see the sun at all times.

Astronauts use the time zone of their control centre.

Americans would use the 'Houston, Texas' Time zone.

There is no local time division in space, except relative to a place on earth

Any time you want. We have time zones on Earth so that the sun is high in the sky at noon wherever you are on Earth. In space, the sun is always high in the sky, so you can set your clock to any time zone you like.