We came to this problem from the places where GPS was never an option. Deep-space missions and lunar landers do not have the luxury of GPS signals. On those programs timekeeping is engineered from the ground up: every clock is characterized, every link is measured, and every claim about what time it is has a number attached to it that someone can defend. That is the standard we were trained to, and it is the standard almost nothing on Earth is held to, because for thirty years a free signal from the sky made it unnecessary.
That signal is now failing every day. Jamming and spoofing that used to be a wartime concern are now routine occurrences and the quiet casualty every time is the clock. Mobile networks, power grids, financial exchanges, and data centers all inherit their time from GPS, and none of them can tell when the time they inherited is wrong. The signal does not announce that it has been lost or replaced. The clock simply keeps running on whatever it was last told, and the systems using it carry on as if nothing happened.
We started Lightyear to bring the discipline of spacecraft mission timekeeping to the global infrastructure. Our flagship service, LightTime, delivers precision time fully independent of any GNSS, referenced directly to the national laboratories that maintain UTC, with a measured uncertainty bound and a signed record for every delivery. It can be the time your site runs on, or the proof that the time you already have is still right. Either way, an operator can answer the question with evidence.
Chief Executive Officer
Ten years in the space industry across Hubble Space Telescope, OSIRIS-REx, Lucy, JANUS, and Blue Origin's lunar lander programs. Led the time synchronization architecture for Blue Origin's MK1 lunar lander. Leads Lightyear's technical direction, design of the service, investor relations, and growth strategy.
