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Pioneer Calendar

Early calendar designed for use on Mars

Pavonis Mons 32 PL
Image from Steve Bowers and Microsoft Image Creator
The Pioneer Calendar is one of the oldest extraplanetary calendar systems devised by Terragens still in current use. Originally designed for the planet Mars, it is thought to have originated at some point in the late Information to early Interplanetary Age. However, it did not see widespread implementation until the early fifth century a.t, when the colonization of the red planet was firmly underway.

The Pioneer Calendar consists of 24 months, each of which contains either 27 or 28 sols (days). Each month is named for an author of speculative fiction from the Industrial to Information Ages: while the identities of several have been lost to time, it is believed that all were dead by the time the calendar was devised. The months of the Pioneer Calendar have been listed below:

1. Asimov
2. Butler
3. Clarke
4. Dick
5. Ellison
6. Fortner
7. Gibson
8. Herbert
9. Iain
10. Jemisin
11. Kho
12. Leckie
13. McCaffree
14. Norton
15. Okorafor
16. Pratchett
17. Robinson
18. Shelley
19. Tolkein
20. Ursula
21. Verne
22. Wells
23. Yoder
24. Zelazny

Each week consists of seven sols, which are named for astronomical bodies visible from Mars (excluding the Sun):

1. Mercursol
2. Venersol
3. Terrasol
4. Phobosol
5. Deimosol
6. Jovisol
7. Saturnsol

While not as far-reaching as the older Tranquility Calendar, the Pioneer Calendar remains in use on the planet Mars and a number of worlds and habs in the Inner Sphere. The calendar's year zero is 68 a.t. (2037 CE), the date of the first manned Mars landing. As the years on Mars are almost twice as long as on Old Earth, the current year in the Pioneer Calendar is 5597 PL (Post-Landing).

 
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Development Notes
Text by James Rogers
Initially published on 17 November 2024.

 
 
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