European space officials have called for establishing a separate time zone on the moon. The European Space Agency (ESA) said the idea was discussed at a recent meeting held at the agency’s Space Research and Technology Centre in the Netherlands. ESA said the effort is part of a larger project to create a complete communication and navigation system for the moon. Space officials say such a system will be necessary to support a growing number of planned launches to the moon in coming years. A series of space operations around the moon will require spacecraft and controllers “to communicate together and fix their positions independently from Earth,” ESA said in a statement. Currently, moon operations run on the time of the country that launched the spacecraft. But ESA officials say this will have to change when more countries and private space companies start launching their own moon missions.