The roadmap for space exploration foresees longer and further travels outside low Earth orbit as well as the establishment of permanent outposts on other celestial bodies like the Moon or Mars. The design of spacecraft and habitats depends heavily on the mission scenario and must take into account the radiation protection properties of the structural components as well as dedicated shielding. In fact, late effects caused by exposure to cosmic radiation are now considered to be the main health risks of space travel. The current strategy is to find multifunctional materials that combine excellent mechanical properties with a high shielding effectiveness to minimize the overall load. The shielding effectiveness of a wide variety of single and multilayer materials of interest for different mission scenarios has been characterized in this work. In the experimental campaign, reference and innovative materials as well simulants of Moon and Mars in-situ resources were exposed to 1000 MeV/u He-4, 430 MeV/u C-14 and 962-972 MeV/u Fe-56. The results are presented in terms of Bragg curves and dose reduction per unit area density. To isolate the shielding effectiveness only due to nuclear fragmentation, a correction for the energy loss in the material is also considered. The findings indicate that the best shield is Lithium Hydride, which performs even better than Polyethylene. The classification of all materials in terms of shielding effectiveness is not influenced by the ion species, but the value changes dramatically depending on the beam energy. The output of this investigation represents a useful database for benchmarking Monte Carlo and deterministic transport codes used for space radiation transport calculations. It also provides recommendations for optimizing the design of space vessels and habitats in different radiation environments.
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