【Economist】 The asteroid belt : E-sail way

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中文导读 太空旅行的代价是很昂贵的，卡西尼号于9月15日完成了它的使命，永远地留在了土星上。像这样对独特个体的探索确实是值得投入的，但是对小行星带来说，未免奢侈。芬兰科学家派卡·鉴胡能提出了太阳能电动帆（E-sail）技术，有望帮助人类理解探索小行星带。 A new method of propelling spacecraft. SPACE travel is expensive. Missions such as Cassini , a recently ended exploration of Saturn and its moons, and New Horizons , a trip to Pluto and one or two more distant objects in the far reaches of the solar system, have involved launching craft weighing hundreds or thousands of kilograms. For big, essentially unique targets such as these, that expense has proved worthwhile. But as exploration moves on to smaller and more numerous objects, like asteroids, individual visits at ………………………………