Science starts in school, where currently, children learn the "old" Gregorian Calendar. "Learning", in this case, means learning how to use it, not learning how it works. This is because the Gregorian Calendar is inherently inconsistent and illogical.

When learning the Lukashian Calendar, children make a direct connection with Astronomy, because the days and years correspond to actual solar days and actual solar years. This way, children don't just learn about the calendar, they also learn about Astronomy!

The Lukashian Calendar is easy to teach, because the mechanism is simple and consistent. Children can create their own dummy calendars, with their own years and days, allowing them to play with the mechanism and explore how it works. This is a much more natural way of learning, that leads to actual understanding, rather than just knowing how to use it.

The Lukashian Calendar embraces the fact that days and years have variable durations, instead of constant ones. The mechanism does not make any assumptions about how long a day or a year is, or how many days a year has. It is therefore easily possible to plug in the durations of days and years on Mars instead of Earth, in order to create an instance of the Lukashian Calendar for the upcoming Mars Settlement that is accurate with respect to Martian astronomy.

Days correspond exactly to actual Martian sols and years correspond exactly to actual Mars years. On Mars, this is especially important, since Allison & McEwen showed that true solar days can be as much as 51 minutes out of sync with mean solar days. A calendar with constant duration days simply does not work on Mars.

Let's see what the Martian instance of the Lukashian Calendar looks like, compared to the Earth instance.

The Earth takes approximately 31.6 million seconds to orbit the Sun. During that time, it rotates approximately 365.25 times around its own axis, with each day lasting approximately 86400 seconds:

Mars takes approximately 59.4 million seconds to orbit the Sun. During that time, it rotates approximately 668.60 times around its own axis, with each day lasting approximately 88775 seconds:

As we can see, it makes no difference how long the years and the days are, or how many days are in a year. The mechanism applies universally.

On Earth, a week is simply a period of 10 days: 7 working days and 3 weekend days. There are no months and the weekdays don't have names, like Monday or Tuesday. We can simply use the last digit of each day to tell which day of the week it is. The final week of the year lasts 5 or 6 days (day 361 to day 365/366):

On Mars, the only differences are that the days are slightly longer and the final week lasts 8 or 9 days (day 661 to day 668/669):

As on Earth, the time of day is expressed as the proportion of the day that has passed, which is represented in terms of basis points (beeps). A beep is one ten-thousandth of a day. On Earth, this is around 8.6 seconds. On Mars, this is around 8.9 seconds.

A year runs from southern solstice to southern solstice, because this is a natural moment for one year to end and another to start. The particular southern solstice that was chosen to be the start of the Lukashian Calendar on Earth, is the one 5925 years ago. This number was chosen for three reasons:

As you can read in the detailed explanation of these reasons, the start of the calendar needs to coincide with both the turn of year and the turn of day.

In order to determine the start of the Lukashian Calendar on Mars, we could consider the first reason. All of human history on Mars should fit in the calendar, which would require the calendar to start at least about 70 years ago.

The second reason (the last two digits matching the Gregorian Calendar), is irrelevant. For the third reason, the outcome is going to depend on the exact location of the landing zone and the first Mars Settlement. This location would have to face away from the Sun during the turn of day.

Since the location of the first Mars Settlement isn't known yet, we chose the landing site of Pathfinder, which happens to be close to the Ares III Hab in Acidalia Planitia, as a provisional anchor point. This gives us the Martian southern solstice that took place on April 27, 1947 (Gregorian), which is 42 Martian years ago, as the start of the Lukashian Calendar on Mars.

For the current date and time on Mars, click the switch at the top right of the page. For a full screen Martian clock, click the clock above the switch!

While the actual location of the Mars Settlement is still being determined, analog missions on Earth can already start using the Lukashian Calendar, in order to practice and evaluate it, and they can use the Earth instance in doing so. After all, analog missions do take place on Earth!

Analog astronauts can use Lukashian days and years, and keep time using the Lukashian clock, while still being in sync with the daily and seasonal cycles of Earth. The Lukashian Calendar is the only calendar that allows this and the experience of analog astronauts will be nearly identical to that of actual Mars settlers.

If you are interested in setting up an analog mission with the Lukashian Calendar, please contact us, and we can help you figure out requirements, test scenarios and other implementation details.

Colonizing a new planet means starting from scratch. Let's not burden ourselves with yet another complex calendar that makes no sense. When we have a greenfield, let's get it right!

If you want to learn the details of the mechanism, check out this page!