National Geographic, October 2025: Prof. Luca Valentini on Sustainable Lunar Habitats

17.10.2025

The October 2025 issue of National Geographic is titled "The Great Race to the Moon". This edition focuses on new space missions and the preparations to return humans to the Moon and build permanent settlements.

Inside the magazine, there's also an interview with Luca Valentini, professor at the Department of Geosciences, University of Padua, and scientific director of the GLAMS project (Geopolymers for Additive Manufacturing and Lunar Monitoring), funded by the Italian Space Agency.

The project aims to create structural elements for the construction of lunar bases, using a 3D printing approach that utilizes cement binders formulated from lunar soils (regolith), following the principle of exploiting locally available raw materials.

"We have subjected our regolith-based formulations to numerous printing tests and, at present, we have managed to extrude a prototype measuring several tens of centimeters, which has shown interesting stability properties during extrusion and development of mechanical properties. By the end of 2025, we plan to print a new prototype with an estimated mass of about 200 kg" explains Prof. Valentini.