MTC

MTC (Coordinated Mars Time) is a proposed Mars analog to Universal Time (UT1) on Earth.

A Martian year is 687 days. Though dates given in Doom (2016) seem to relate to a 365-day Earth calendar for whatever reasons, or at least there are no date higher than 351 given in any Codex references. While the dates mention MTC, it doesn't actually conform to the actual MTC format. MTC only relates to hours, minutes and seconds (not 'years' or 'months'): the specific year dates listed in the game appear to be standard earth dates based on the Gregorian calendar (including references to Terran months: October and December). There is one use of 385 days (assuming its correct and not a typo) it would imply a use of My (Mars Years), rather than an Earth year or Sol Unit.

Background

MTC is defined as the mean solar time at Mars's prime meridian. The prime meridian was first proposed by German astronomers and in 1830 as marked by the fork in the later named by Italian astronomer. This convention was readily adopted by the astronomical community, the result being that Mars had a universally accepted prime meridian half a century before the of 1880 established one for Earth. The definition of the Martian prime meridian has since been refined on the basis of spacecraft imagery as the center of the crater in Terra Meridiani. The name "MTC" is intended to parallel the Terran (UTC), but this is somewhat misleading: what distinguishes UTC from other forms of UT is its, but MTC does not use any such scheme. MTC is more closely analogous to .

Use of the term "MTC" as the name of a planetary standard time for Mars first appeared in the Mars24 sunclock coded by the NASA. It replaced Mars24's previous use of the term "Airy Mean Time" (AMT), which was a direct parallel of (GMT). In an astronomical context, "GMT" is a deprecated name for Universal Time, or sometimes more specifically for UT1.

AMT has not yet been employed in official mission timekeeping. This is partially attributable to uncertainty regarding the position of Airy-0 (relative to other longitudes), which meant that AMT couldn't be realized as accurately as local time at points being studied. At the start of the missions, the positional uncertainty of Airy-0 corresponded to roughly a 20-second uncertainty in realizing AMT.

Year numbering

For purposes of enumerating Mars years and facilitating data comparisons, a system increasingly used in the scientific literature, particularly studies of Martian climate, enumerates years relative to the northern spring equinox (L_s 0) that occurred on April 11, 1955, labeling it a Mars Year 1 (MY1). The system was first described in a paper focused on seasonal temperature variation by R. Todd Clancy of the Space Science Institute. Although Clancy and co-authors described the choice as "arbitrary", the great dust storm of 1956 falls in MY1. This system has been extended by defining Mars Year 0 (MY0) as beginning May 24, 1953, and so allowing for negative year numbers.

Dates of Mars Seasons for Mars Years
MY	Spring equinox (Ls = 0°)	Summer solstice (Ls = 90°)	Autumnal equinox (Ls = 180°)	Winter solstice (Ls = 270°)	Events Earth Date [Mars Year/Lsº]
0	1953-05-24
1	1955-04-11	1955-10-27	1956-04-27	1956-09-21
2	1957-02-26	1957-09-13	1958-03-15	1958-08-09
3	1959-01-14	1959-08-01	1960-01-31	1960-06-26
4	1960-12-01	1961-06-18	1961-12-18	1962-05-14
5	1962-10-19	1963-05-05	1963-11-05	1964-03-31
6	1964-09-05	1965-03-22	1965-09-22	1966-02-15	1964-07-14 [6/143º] Mariner 4 flyby
7	1966-07-24	1967-02-07	1967-08-10	1968-01-03
8	1968-06-10	1968-12-25	1969-06-27	1969-11-20	1969-07-31 [8/200º] Mariner 6 and Mariner 7 flybys
9	1970-04-28	1970-11-12	1971-05-15	1971-10-08	1971-11-14 [9/284º] Mariner 9 enters orbit 1971-11-27 Mars 2 enters orbit 1971-12-02 Mars 3 enters orbit
10	1972-03-15	1972-09-29	1973-04-01	1973-08-25
11	1974-01-31	1974-08-17	1975-02-17	1975-07-13	1974-02 [11/0º] Mars 4 and Mars 5 enter orbit
12	1975-12-19	1976-07-04	1977-01-04	1977-05-30	1976-07 [12/88º] Viking 1 Orbiter & Lander arrive 1976-09 [12/116º] Viking 2 Orbiter & Lander arrive
13	1977-11-05	1978-05-22	1978-11-22	1979-04-17
14	1979-09-23	1980-04-08	1980-10-09	1981-03-04
15	1981-08-10	1982-02-24	1982-08-27	1983-01-20
16	1983-06-28	1984-01-12	1984-07-14	1984-12-07
17	1985-05-15	1985-11-29	1986-06-01	1986-10-25
18	1987-04-01	1987-10-17	1988-04-18	1988-09-11	1989-01-29 [19/350º] Phobos 2 enters orbit
19	1989-02-16	1989-09-03	1990-03-06	1990-07-30
20	1991-01-04	1991-07-22	1992-01-22	1992-06-16
21	1992-11-21	1993-06-08	1993-12-08	1994-05-04
22	1994-10-09	1995-04-26	1995-10-26	1996-03-21
23	1996-08-26	1997-03-13	1997-09-12	1998-02-06	1997-07-04 [23/142º] Mars Pathfinder arrives 1997-09 [23/173º] Mars Global Surveyor enters orbit
24	1998-07-14	1999-01-29	1999-07-31	1999-12-25
25	2000-05-31	2000-12-16	2001-06-17	2001-11-11	2001-10-24 [25/258º] Mars Odyssey enters orbit
26	2002-04-18	2002-11-03	2003-05-05	2003-09-29	2003-12-14 [26/315º] Nozomi flies past Mars 2004-01 [26/325º] Mars Express, Spirit Rover, and Opportunity Rover arrive
27	2004-03-05	2004-09-20	2005-03-22	2005-08-16
28	2006-01-21	2006-08-08	2007-02-07	2007-07-04	2006-03-10 [28/22º] Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter arrives
29	2007-12-09	2008-06-25	2008-12-25	2009-05-21	2008-05-25 [29/76º] Phoenix lander arrives
30	2009-10-26	2010-05-13	2010-11-12	2011-04-08
31	2011-09-13	2012-03-30	2012-09-29	2013-02-23	2012-08-06 [31/150º] Curiosity Rover arrives
32	2013-07-31	2014-02-15	2014-08-17	2015-01-11	2014-09-22 [32/200º] MAVEN arrives 2014-09-24 [32/202] Mars Orbiter Mission arrives
33	2015-06-18	2016-01-03	2016-07-04	2016-11-28
34	2017-05-05	2017-11-20	2018-05-22	2018-10-16
35	2019-03-23	2019-10-08	2020-04-08	2020-09-02
36	2021-02-07	2021-08-25	2022-02-24	2022-07-21
37	2022-12-26	2023-07-12	2024-01-12	2024-06-07
38	2024-11-12	2025-05-29	2025-11-29	2026-04-25
39	2026-09-30	2027-04-16	2027-10-17	2028-03-12
40	2028-08-17	2029-03-03	2029-09-03	2030-01-28

If the dates given in the game are MY years, MY2149 would be extremely far in the future, roughly in the 4000s.

Formulas to compute MSD and MTC

MSD can be computed from the Julian date referred to Terrestrial Time (TT), as

MSD = (JD_TT − 2405522.0028779) / 1.0274912517

Terrestrial time, however, is not as easily available as Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). TT can be computed from UTC by first adding the difference TAI−UTC, which is a positive integer number of seconds occasionally updated by the introduction of leap seconds (see current number of leap seconds), then adding the constant difference TT−TAI = 32.184 s. This leads to the following formula giving MSD from the UTC-referred Julian date:

MSD = (JD_UTC + (TAI−UTC)/86400 − 2405522.0025054) / 1.0274912517

where the difference TAI−UTC is in seconds. JD_UTC can in turn be computed from any epoch-based time stamp, by adding the Julian date of the epoch to the time stamp in days. For example, if t is a Unix timestamp in seconds, then

JD_UTC = t / 86400 + 2440587.5

It follows, by a simple substitution:

MSD = (t + (TAI−UTC)) / 88775.244147 + 34127.2954262

MTC is simply the fractional part of MSD, in hours, minutes and seconds:

MTC = (MSD mod 1) × 24 h

For example, at the time this page was last generated (13 Jan 2017, 10:29:32 UTC):

• JD_TT = 2457766.93798
• MSD = 50847.08508
• MTC = 02:02:31