Coordinated Mars Time ( MTC ) or Martian Coordinated Time is a proposed Mars analog to Universal Time ( UT1 ) on Earth . It is defined as the mean solar time at Mars 's prime meridian . The prime meridian was first proposed by German astronomers Wilhelm Beer and Johann Heinrich Mädler in 1830 as marked by the fork in the albedo feature later named Sinus Meridiani by Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli . 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 International Meridian Conference of 1884 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 Airy-0 in Terra Meridiani . The name " MTC " is intended to parallel the Terran Coordinated Universal Time ( UTC ) , but this is somewhat misleading : what distinguishes UTC from other forms of UT is its leap seconds , but MTC does not use any such scheme . MTC is more closely analogous to UT1
International Meridian Conference
International Meridian Conference
Timekeeping on Mars