Living on the Moon is often imagined through habitats and rovers, but the real bottleneck is infrastructure: without reliable power and communications, no outpost can survive the lunar night. With the Artemis program preparing to return astronauts to the south pole, the question of how to power and connect a base has moved from theory to necessity.
To address that challenge, British construction giant Foster + Partners is developing a spiraling Tall Lunar Tower designed to provide both energy and communications in a single, self-deploying structure. I spoke with Irene Gallou, Senior Partner and Head of the Specialist Modelling Group, about how the design is being shaped through additive manufacturing, robotics, and early environmental testing.
Announced in April this year, the tower concept grew out of NASA's Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I program, pairing the construction giant with US-based Branch Technology to explore new approaches to lunar infrastructure.
Phase I of "this project [is] focused on the design and manufacturing of the tower whilst assuming the existence of a foundation (which was studied from another consortium in the NASA funding ecosystem)," she explains. The goal was to demonstrate how a self-deploying structure could overcome the scarcity of equipment and materials on the Moon, while also proving that additive manufacturing could deliver lightweight yet resilient geometries.
That work culminated in several demonstrators, including a full-scale 5 m tall section of the tower produced at Branch Technology's US facilities using its cellular fabrication (C-Fab) process. The prototype showcased the design's suitability for large-scale fabrication and was exhibited in spring 2025 at the 'Earth to Space' exhibition at the Kennedy Space Center in Washington, DC, providing the first tangible validation of the concept.
The next step was to test how such a design could be adapted to the realities of the lunar environment, beginning with how it responds structurally.
Designing for lunar conditions
On the Moon even the simplest structure must withstand unfamiliar forces, a challenge which the spiral tower addresses through its geometry.
According to Gallou, "the diagrid geometry of the tower provides clear load paths for the vertical and lateral loads resulting from the solar array and natural hazards such as moonquakes."
"Said loads were calculated from the team for the lunar gravity and subsequently the structure was optimised and evaluated using Finite Element Analysis within a parametric geometry CAD platform," she says. These simulations provide confidence the structure can perform in reduced gravity before physical trials.
But proving stability in software was only the first step; the greater challenge lay in how to actually build the tower on the Moon.
Constructing the tower is just as critical as ensuring its stability, and the team considered how this could be achieved without the heavy machinery that cannot realistically be transported from Earth. As the Senior Partner describes it, "autonomous robotic systems were studied at a conceptual level for manufacturing the tower from the ground up."
The idea relies on climber robots "envisioned to 3D print the structure whilst travelling on integrated spiral rails," a system that could later be reused for solar array deployment and long-term maintenance. This dual-use approach aims to conserve resources while tackling the demands of lunar construction.
Material development is being staged in deliberate steps, with the first demonstrators being "constructed using earth-based materials and [Branch Technology's] free-form 3D printing cellular fabrication techniques."
Moving to higher Technology Readiness Levels (TRL) will require local resources such as lunar aluminium, and that transition will depend on solving "compatibility with the atmospheric vacuum," a factor that shapes both material processing and technology development.
This phased approach allows the geometry and process to be validated with accessible materials while preparing for the far more demanding conditions of the lunar environment. The design is also tailored to site-specific parameters, optimised for conditions near the Shackleton crater at the lunar south pole, where illumination and topography directly influence material processing and construction methods.
Branch Technology's C-Fab process uses large six-axis arms to extrude open lattice structures directly from digital geometry, forming complex shapes without traditional cutting or assembly.
In practice, this has delivered up to twenty times less material use and production speeds as much as five times faster than conventional methods. This combination yields components that are both lightweight and structurally efficient.
That balance is particularly valuable for lunar construction, where every kg delivered from Earth carries enormous cost. To prepare for broader adoption, the C-Fab process has been tested against ASTM (C78, C140, E72) standards for flexural, compressive, and panel strength, as well as NFPA (285) fire safety requirements.
Having laid out its design and manufacturing process, Gallou also pointed toward why this infrastructure matters for the survival and growth of a lunar outpost.
Toward sustainable lunar operations
The spiral tower is intended to fulfil more than one role, addressing both energy generation and communications in a single structure. According to the Senior Partner, combining the two "minimises the material needed compared to creating two separate systems." Even so, trade-offs between outfitting for power and communications are expected to be studied in greater detail in Phase II of the project.
Its design envisions sail-like solar arrays that unfold once the tower is deployed, creating a platform for energy capture while also supporting communications. Rising 50 m above the surface, the tower would improve line-of-sight communication while reducing shadows cast by surrounding terrain onto its solar arrays.
Yet even with this advantage, the tower must prove its ability to sustain operations through the most unforgiving period of the lunar cycle: the two-week night.
Providing power through the two-week lunar night remains one of the most difficult challenges, since generation alone cannot guarantee continuity without reliable storage. Concepts under review include insulated rechargeable batteries and regenerative fuel cells with cryogenic storage, options that the Senior Partner says "will be explored in greater detail in Phase II."
Additionally, "Planned environmental simulations include thermal load testing to account for the extreme temperature gradients, structural analysis for natural hazards (e.g., moonquakes), as well as experimental testing of materials and processes in vacuum chambers," she notes.
These trials are intended to demonstrate whether the design can withstand the most punishing aspects of the lunar environment, and success at this stage is defined not by deployment but by survival under lunar-like stresses.
Looking further ahead, Gallou frames the tower as an essential enabler for life beyond Earth. "The successful development of lunar infrastructure such as the Tall Lunar Tower is an important step towards enabling technologies for the expansion of exploration, settlement and industrialisation activities on the lunar surface, and their long-term viability," she says.
Building a backbone for lunar expansion
As Gallou puts it, "Sustained and sustainable presence on the Moon, Mars, and beyond depends on core infrastructure that can enable power generation, life support, and food [and] water production."
It is a vision that places the Tall Lunar Tower within a wider set of efforts now underway to make such infrastructure possible. One example is lunar logistics company Astrobotic's LunaGrid, which is being built as a commercial power service to distribute energy across the lunar surface.
Its first demonstrator, LunaGrid-Lite, recently passed Critical Design Review and entered hardware production, with a mission planned for 2026. Using a CubeRover to deploy 500 meters of ultra-light cable, the flight will attempt to transmit one kilowatt of power on the Moon for the first time, a proof-of-concept step toward the larger LunaGrid network.
These commercial demonstrations coincide with the Artemis program to establish a sustained human presence at the lunar south pole later this decade, though its path has not been without uncertainty. Earlier in 2025, the Artemis program faced doubts when a budget proposal called for retiring the Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion after Artemis 3 and cancelling the Gateway outpost.
Those concerns eased in July, when Congress passed new legislation securing nearly $10 billion in long-term funding for Artemis, SLS, Orion, and Gateway through 2032. Even with that backing, the program continues to wrestle with delays and cost pressures, leaving international partners such as European Space Agency (ESA) mindful of how changes to Artemis could reshape their role.
Against this backdrop, ESA is also pursuing its own initiative. The Moonlight program aims to deploy a constellation of satellites to deliver navigation and continuous communication across the lunar surface. A Lunar Pathfinder mission is targeted for 2026, with full service expected before the end of the decade, positioning Moonlight as a cornerstone for international missions whether or not Artemis proceeds as originally planned.
Agencies including NASA, ESA, and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) are likewise working toward LunaNet, a framework of shared standards designed to connect these disparate systems into a single communications architecture.
Much like the early internet, its success will depend on ensuring that infrastructure built by different operators can interlink rather than remain isolated. If achieved, LunaNet could become the backbone that allows power, communications, and navigation projects to function as a unified network.
Together these efforts highlight that long-term presence on the Moon will depend on infrastructure that is not only reliable on its own but able to connect into a larger system.
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