In March 2001, the Shaanxi Astronomy Observatory was renamed as the National Time Service Center (NTSC) with the approval of the State Commission Office of Public Sector Reform. Since then, NTSC has been focusing on time service: satisfying the urgent needs of China’s development for different precision especially high precision time service, providing all-round, multi-level, multi-method, advanced and convenient time service for the sustainable development of national economy. At the same time, NTSC has been committing to research in time and frequency discipline, including high-precision time transmission and synchronization, new technology and methods of time service, high-precision time and frequency measurement and control, time scale and time service theory and method, design and development of time user system, etc. All this work has made China’s time service and time-frequency research ranks among the world’s advanced level. In 2005, the research team of quantum frequency standard was established to develop prospective atomic clocks and high-precision time-frequency instruments.

After more than 50 years of development, NTSC has become unique, specialized, comprehensive scientific research institution engaged in time frequency research in China. It has formed a relatively complete research chain in the field of time and frequency with ” atomic clock- time keeping- time service- time use”, as well as in the field of satellite navigation with "time-signal-orbit". And what’s more besides, NTSC takes charges of the establishment, maintenance and time service of China's standard time, providing comprehensive and reliable high-precision time services for national economic development.

National Time Service Center, CAS((Image Credit: NTSC)