经济学人下载:空间探索:拂去尘埃(2)

At the same time a growing number of private firms have ambitions to mine precious metals from those celestial bodies, too.
同时，许多私营公司都有从那些天体中开采贵金属的野心。

One of the (many) problems that NASA and the space-prospecting crowd will have to solve is what to do about the dust.
那么，对于美国家航空航天局与希望进行太空勘探的人来说，首要解决的麻烦之一就是对付这些扬尘。

Fortunately for them Kavya Manyapu, an engineer at Boeing who has been working with scientists from NASA’s Glenn Research Centre, may have a solution.
对他们来说有一个好消息：波音公司的一位工程师Kavya Manyapu现如今正在与来自美国家航空航天局的格伦研究中心的科学家合作，而这个问题有望得到解决。

Ms Manyapu has come up with a new kind of spacesuit material that neutralises the dust in two different ways, one passive and one active.
Manyapu女士提出了两种除尘方式：有源除尘和无源除尘，使用一种新型宇航服材料消除尘埃碎片威胁。

The passive strategy is a novel polymer-based coating that is applied to the top of an ordinary fabric spacesuit.
无源除尘是将一种新型以高分子聚合物为主的材料覆盖在普通太空服布料的外层，

It is impregnated with tiny dust-like particles of its own, which makes it harder for the real thing to stick.
如同齑粉一样微小的尘埃碎片将会被吸附在这种材料上难以脱身。

To get rid of any dust that does nevertheless manage to accumulate, the material also has embedded within it a yarn made of conducting carbon-nanotube fibres.
有源除尘是将碳纳米管传导纤维做成的纱线与上述的高分子聚合物材料一同进行纺织。

Connect those to a power source, and the fabric can create an electric field that repels the charged dust particles.
将织好的布料连接电源，此时织物能够产生电场使尘埃碎片带上电荷，而在电场的作用下带上电荷的尘埃颗粒就会沿着碳纤维移动到相应的电极上。

In tests, the two systems managed to repel about 90% of the simulated lunar dust that the material was exposed to.
在实验中，上述两种除尘方式都能够消除材料表面近九成的模拟月尘。

That would be a useful trick for future lunar explorers.
对于未来的月球勘探者来说，这也许会成为一项有价值的研究。

But as is traditional for technology developed for use in space, Boeing is keen on terrestrial applications, too.
不过按照惯例，在一种传统的技术发展到能在太空上运用之前，波音公司更希望能首先运用在地球上。

The firm reckons its dust-repellent fabric could find uses in medicine or clean-room manufacturing.
该公司预计，能够找到这种防尘纤维，并且能将其运用在医疗或者是工业的无尘室中。

But until it has patented the idea, the company is not going into specifics.
虽然该项研究已经成功申请专利，但至今该公司并未提出具体的发展计划。