This article was originally published at The Conversation. The publication contributed the article to Space.com's Expert Voices: Op-Ed & Insights.

Interest in the moon has been high – just in the past two years there have been 12 attempts to send missions to the moon, nearly half of which private companies undertook. With so much activity, it's important to start thinking about coordination and safety.

To some, this concern may seem premature. About 10 to 20 missions are headed to the moon in the next few years – far short of the thousands of satellites operating in Earth's orbit. And the area around the moon, referred to as cislunar space, is very large. Earth's orbital area is often considered to extend from near Earth out to geostationary orbit, where a spacecraft orbits at a speed th

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