Member of the Planetary Society and Director of the Facebook page Pianeta-Marte.it, I currently collaborate with several online newspapers and national TV. My experience as a historian of space exploration dates back many decades. In fact, I have been following humanity's climb to space with great attention, continuously since the moon landing in 1969.

Passionate about planetary astronomy, with particular interest in Mars, in 1973 I contributed to the foundation of the Astrofili Association "De Reitha" (Ravenna). In the 1980s, I began my career as a journalist and reporter for Marcello Sabbatini's weekly Rombo, and I collaborated as a freelance journalist with several magazines specialized in astronomy and astronautics, including Nuovo Orione. In 1997 I began my collaboration with the Rivista Aeronautica, the official periodical of the Italian Air Force, which will end in 2011.

Following my growing activity as a popularizer, I immediately felt the need to fill the historical gaps, then little known, of the "Space Race". For this reason I decided to study the subject in depth from a historical point of view, thus starting my activity as an essayist. In 2004, for the publishing house Aiep, I published my first book: Pianeta Marte - Miti e realtà del futuro avapposto dell’umanità. This title will be followed by Sputnik - L’alba dell’era spazio (2007); Cosmonauti-Esploratori dell’Universo (2009); Sister Moon - Visions and Reality on Our Astral Companion (2014) and Apollo - The Challenge to the Moon (2011), which will be followed by three other updated editions, the last of which wins the "Vega" award for aerospace dissemination in 2019.

The same year, on the occasion of the fiftieth anniversary of the landing of the first man on the Moon, I publish for the publishing house La Moderna, the color photographic book in English and Italian Men on The Moon - An American History, which after the endorsement of NASA, receives the recognition from the Historical Office of the same for "quality and interest", being among the best texts published for the occasion.

In 2021 I return to the bookstore with Uomini o Marziani – Marte e l'origine della vita (Aiep 2021), an essay that collects the latest scientific analyses that see Mars as the “cradle of life on Earth”, and after an excursus on the planet, analyzes the problems related to the long journey that the crew will have to face; to the construction of the first outposts; and to the definitive colonization on the planet, which can be addressed and resolved with technical solutions already available today, which will not only allow humans to live on Mars, but if used on our planet, will allow the Earth's population to live in an eco-sustainable way, feeding a growing population that will reach 10 billion in 2030. The essay, which was a finalist for the Vega Prize 2022, is also interactive, in fact, each chapter is preceded by a QR-code that allows the reader to see a short film, preparatory to the topic discussed.

In 2023, Mattioli 1885 will publish in bookstores Space Wars – The Space Race from the Cold War to Space Stations and Beyond (1945-2022), an essay that analyzes the historical events of the Space Race during the Cold War years, looking for parallels with what is currently happening in Space, with the entry of new powerful players such as China and India, who are trying to wrest from the United States a strategic supremacy that has lasted uninterruptedly since the 1980s.

In all these years I have also found the time to organize eighteen thematic exhibitions on Space, thanks to the personal availability of hundreds of texts and photos, as well as a complete miniaturized representation of the “space race”, with thematic models that start from Leonardo’s helicopter and end up with the current NASA “Orion” spaceship. My latest exhibition: “Spazio al Vinile”, wanted to show how Space has influenced music, thanks to the exhibition of vinyls, of a journalistic and musical type, up to soundtracks, whose covers are directly derived, or inspired, by the space enterprises of all times.

In these years, however, I have not dedicated myself only to “Space”, in fact, I have published the story of my father Antonio as a Partisan, dedicating the book Orlando - Storia di un romagnolo partigiano in Piemonte (Moderna) to him, to which have been added several books of illustrated love poems, under the name of Stefano Sante Cavina.