The Legacy and Future of Aluminum Alloys: Space Exploration and Extraterrestrial Settlement

The metallurgy of aluminum alloys has long shaped the history of space exploration. Their combination of low density, high strength, and excellent manufacturability and formability makes them indispensable for structural components in satellites and spacecraft. However, the next era of human space exploration, spanning long-duration deep-space missions and extraterrestrial settlement, poses unprecedented new challenges, including radiation damage and shielding, thermal cycling, micrometeoroid impacts, hydrogen embrittlement, and other degradation forces acting in synergy. Addressing these issues requires the reinvention of aluminum metallurgy, tailored to space environments. This perspective adopts a multidisciplinary approach, tracing the evolution of aluminum alloys in spaceflight, evaluating their performance under space-specific degradation mechanisms, and outlining future design strategies that integrate insights from chemistry, physics, metallurgy, and materials science to develop the next generation of space materials.