Sometimes, the best solutions are simple and should have been obvious, but take a flash of insight...

<url="http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2006/04apr_magneticmoondust.htm>Article here</url>

April 4, 2006: Thirty-plus years ago on the moon, Apollo astronauts made an important discovery: Moondust can be a major nuisance. The fine powdery grit was everywhere and had a curious way of getting into things. Moondust plugged bolt holes, fouled tools, coated astronauts' visors and abraded their gloves. Very often while working on the surface, they had to stop what they were doing to clean their cameras and equipment using large--and mostly ineffective--brushes.

Dealing with "the dust problem" is going to be a priority for the next generation of NASA explorers. But how? Professor Larry Taylor, director of the Planetary Geosciences Institute at the University of Tennessee, believes he has an answer: "Magnets."

Above: In Taylor's lab, moondust scattered onto a wire mesh lines up with a magnet inserted below. Slideshow: #1, #2, #3, #4.

The idea came to him in the year 2000. Taylor was in his lab studying a moondust sample from the Apollo 17 mission and, curious to see what would happen, he ran a magnet through the dust. To his surprise, "all of the little grains jumped up and stuck to the magnet."

"I didn't appreciate what I had discovered," recalls Taylor, "until I was explaining it to Apollo 17 astronaut Jack Schmitt one day in my office, and he said, 'Gads, just think what we could have done with a brush with a magnet attached!'"