Abstract
The terrestrial set of regulated properties of building materials – frost resistance, water absorption, sulphate resistance – becomes inapplicable on an airless celestial body. The paper proposes a system of six selection criteria for the materials of envelope structures of an uncrewed lunar module: vacuum stability within the ASTM E595 thresholds (TML ≤ 1.0 %, CVCM ≤ 0.10 %), thermal cycling resistance over an amplitude from minus 173 to plus 127 °C, radiation shielding efficiency per unit of areal density, resistance to impact and abrasive action, ISRU manufacturability, and maintainability. The specific character of an uncrewed unit is substantiated: its dose criterion is relaxed from 30 to 10–15 g/cm², which allows the regolith cover to be reduced to 200–250 mm. Five compositions of the envelope layer are compared, an additive convolution of partial indicators with weights obtained by the analytic hierarchy process is proposed, and an experimental verification programme on the domestic VI-75 lunar soil analogue (GEOKHI RAS) is outlined.