A tower that builds itself on the Moon’s surface to capture sunlight for future lunar settlements is the achievement of an interdisciplinary team including Churchill Fellow Marina Konstantatou.
Building infrastructure on the Moon presents a significant challenge: large structures require heavy construction equipment, yet launching that equipment from Earth is prohibitively expensive. Human construction crews would face radiation exposure and extreme temperature swings of 300°C between lunar day and night.
The NASA-funded consortium developed a solution which sidesteps both obstacles: a tower that constructs itself using robotic 3D printing technology on location.
As the research lead of Foster + Partners’ Specialist Modelling Group, and in collaboration with Branch Technology, Konstantatou and the team developed a helical tower incorporating integrated spiral rails—essentially a giant corkscrew that serves as both structure and construction mechanism. Climbing robots ascend and descend these rails during construction, maintenance, and solar panel deployment. No cranes. No astronauts in spacesuits. No heavy equipment shipped from Earth.
The tower is designed to support a 100-kilowatt solar array – sufficient to power a small lunar base.
Konstantatou led the computational geometry work resulting in a fully parametric system – a digital model that adapts to changing requirements. Using custom algorithms developed in Grasshopper software, engineers can modify everything from tower density and wall thickness to spiral track dimensions, optimising for structural strength and material efficiency.
The tower employs Cellular Fabrication, a technique that creates truss-like lattice structures instead of solid walls. This approach uses significantly less material than conventional 3D printing while maintaining structural integrity – critical efficiency when launch costs make every kilogram count.
The conceptual structural design of the permeable lattice provides multiple advantages: clear load paths that resist forces, reduced thermal stress from the structure’s open form, and geometric versatility to withstand the lunar environment.
The consortium has built a 1:50 scale functional prototype featuring a working robotic climber and rotating solar array. They’ve also constructed a full-scale 5-meter tower section using Branch Technology’s 3D printing process, demonstrating the design’s viability at deployment size.
This research represents a new approach to lunar construction. Instead of launching large prefabricated structures from Earth, future missions could deploy compact 3D printing systems that manufacture infrastructure from lunar regolith upon arrival.
The next development phase will refine material compositions, optimise the structural system against lunar hazards (e.g., moonquakes), and develop autonomous robotic systems, bringing self-constructing lunar infrastructure closer to practical reality.