Beyond Beryllium: AI-Accelerated Materials Discovery for Interstellar Spacecraft Shielding

Abstract

Project Daedalus (1973--1978), the most detailed interstellar probe design study ever conducted, specified a 9 mm beryllium erosion shield to protect the spacecraft payload during its 5.9 light-year cruise to Barnard's Star at 12% of the speed of light. This design, however, predated both the isolation of two-dimensional materials and the development of graph neural network (GNN) property predictors. Here, we systematically screen 20 candidate materials--spanning conventional aerospace metals, transition metal dichalcogenides, and ultra-high-temperature ceramics--using density functional theory (DFT) data from the JARVIS database (76,000 materials) with independent validation by the Atomistic Line Graph Neural Network (ALIGNN). We evaluate candidates across four criteria: specific mechanical stiffness (KV/rho), sputtering resistance, thermal neutron absorption cross-section, and thermodynamic stability. Our screening identifies hexagonal boron nitride (h-BN) and boron carbide (B4C) as dual-function materials offering simultaneous mechanical protection and neutron radiation shielding, and we propose a graphene/h-BN/polymer layered heterostructure shield design that achieves an estimated 47% mass reduction relative to the original beryllium specification. These findings will become immediately actionable upon the successful development of fusion pulse propulsion, which we note remains an outstanding engineering challenge.