Why losing a nanosecond in space could be utterly catastrophic for astronauts

The mysteries of the cosmos are only getting more mysterious, and now, astronauts have another thing to worry about while bobbing about in the stars.

Being an astronaut is no easy job, and although Katy Perry can technically boast the claim that she's an astronaut, every trip to space can be perilous. As the clocks prepare to roll back and we get an extra hour in bed, astronauts and scientists have much more to worry about.

Keeping time is an important part of maintaining order, but with fears that the planet's rotation is speeding up and days could be getting shorter, it's a literal race against time.

Sky News reminds us that time in space being even a few billionths of a second off can toss our planet into banking into chaos and plunge us into darkness.

Astronauts are given special watches that deal with the vibrations of a rocket taking off, the extreme temperatures of spacewalks, and radiation when out in the cosmos.

Christoph Grainger-Herr, chief executive of luxury watchmaker IWC, explained: "In terms of your vital supplies, you want to know your elapsed mission time, how much time have I got out there, how time have I spent outside the spacecraft?

"All of these things are completely new demands on a mechanical watch than what we're used to having in aviation on Earth, where you're inside a nice cockpit most of the time and things are a lot more calm in comparison to space flight."

Even though keeping astronauts on time is one challenge, that's nothing compared to the dev

ices that tell time in our orbiting satellites. Satellites telling the time is a vital part of keeping Earth ticking, and every time you use your phone to find your location for navigation, it pings off at least four satellites.

Dr Ramsey Faragher, chief executive of the Royal Institute of Navigation, tells us: "The GPS receiver can work out, 'Well, the only way I could have heard this particular sequence of timing messages from those particular satellites is if I'm in that exact place'.

"If your clocks are only drifting by more than a few nanoseconds relative to each other, then you'd start to get noticeable errors in your positions on the ground."

Seeing a satellite move across relatively slowly is something of an illusion, because in reality, they're whirling around at tens of thousands of miles per hour.

The speed of satellites slows down a clock by 7.2 microseconds a day, which means clocks in a GPS satellite have to run about 38 microseconds faster than a clock on Earth. If not, GPS locations could be off by up to 10km a day.

To keep time, satellites typically contain more than one type of atomic clock, meaning they can stay as accurate as possible.

Trying to get around this, London's National Physical Laboratory (NPL) wants to bypass space by keeping time through a network of fiber cables. The NPL is also attempting to develop a clock that's so painstakingly accurate, it would supposedly lose barely a second in the entire lifetime of the universe.

If that wasn't enough, the International Space Station is even testing a cold atom clock that uses lasers to freeze the atoms and measure time that's 'less jiggly'. So next time you're late, spare a thought for those poor astronauts trying to keep time in space.