**7. Conclusions**

In this chapter, we introduced some relevant materials for lunar habitat construction and power generation. We discussed the radiation environment on the Moon and the effects that radiation can cause in such materials. We provided an overview of computational methods used to study different stages of radiation damage in materials, focusing on the methods that allow simulating the behavior of materials with extreme accuracy down to the atomic scale. We emphasized that by coupling different methods, it is possible to account for different time and length scales in the evolution of the radiation-induced effects and to combine the electronic effects with atomic displacements.

Several particular examples of radiation damage studies have been discussed with the focus on novel materials with enhanced radiation resistance and other remarkable properties for use on the Moon that can revolutionize space exploration. Such materials include HOIPs for energy production and MPEAs and FRP composite materials for construction. The primary materials considered for lunar construction are FRGs with basalt or glass fibers, which have excellent mechanical properties, can benefit from ISRU, and provide necessary radiation shielding. We emphasized that researchers' effort is mainly directed toward the development of additive manufacturing techniques, such as 3D printing for habitat construction from lunar regolith. 3D printing will allow producing complex and customizable products in a shorter time and with a lower cost and material consumption.

Nowadays, the radiation-induced effects in materials for space missions are mainly studied by MC particle transport modeling, inheriting the remarkable modeling and computational efforts by the high-energy physics community. However, with the development of first-principles methods and multiscale simulations, a more accurate understanding of radiation effects in materials can be achieved for the regime below hadronic interactions, with details down to atomic scale. It can be expected that the combination of first-principles methods, MC particle transport, and ML will contribute further to the investigation of materials to unravel their full potential for the application in harsh space radiation environments, in particular for what concerns the resistance and resilience to cumulative displacements effects.

### **Acknowledgements**

The authors are grateful for the funding provided by the project ESC2RAD within the Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation program (grant agreement ID: 776410) and by the project PROIRICE within the program H2020-MSCA-IF 2016 of the Horizon 2020 program of the European Union (grant agreement ID: 748673).

*Lunar Science - Habitat and Humans*
