Radiation Environment Inside a Lunar Lava Tube

Lava tubes under the lunar surface are now believed to be numerous and widespread. They could be hundreds of meters long, tens of meters wide, with 10 or more meters of overburden. This environment could be an excellent location for human habitation, providing a constant thermal environment and significant radiation protection. This project’s focus was to develop a simple model that could simulate the effects of Galactic Cosmic Radiation (GCR) inside lunar lava tubes using the NASA radiation transport model HZETRN2015. If lava tubes can be shown to adequately shield humans from GCR, they could have major implications for permanent lunar settlement missions. This study provides an updated analysis of the feasibility of lunar lava tubes as radiation shelters. The associated models in HZETRN can act as a stepping stone to enable much more complex and detailed simulation in the future.