新概念雙語：地質學家機器被送往火星進行深度挖掘

The InSight Mission will look at Mars’s seismic activity and latent heat to find out more about how planets get made--and how humans might live there.

InSight任務目的在于研究火星的地震活動和潛熱，以了解更多關于火星的形成過程以及在未來人類如何能在那里生活。

“Absolutely spectacular mission…and it’s not a rover, it’s a lander. It’s designed to land and deploy several instruments.”

“這是一項絕對壯觀的任務，并且這次任務并不是在火星上空的漫游，而是實實在在的著陸，并部署相關儀器。”

Jim Green, NASA’s new chief scientist, talking about the InSight Mission to Mars. InSight [Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport] launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California the morning of May 5th. He spoke with Scientific American space editor Lee Billings, who recorded their conversation.

NASA的新首席科學家Jim Green談到火星InSight任務時說。5月5日上午，Insight在加州范登堡空軍基地發(fā)射，以期能夠通過對地震探測、測地學和熱傳導對火星進行深入的內部探索。事后科學美國空間編輯李比林斯采訪了Jim Green，并記錄了相關內容。

“One instrument…will be set on the surface and will measure Marsquakes. Now why are Marsquakes important? Well, Marsquakes, because we can get the acoustic signals and see how they are displayed in time, we can tease out the size of the core, even if it’s liquid or not, the size of the mantle and the crust, and compare those with the big terrestrial planet, Earth, that we know a lot about its interior. And this will really help us understand how terrestrial planets are made.”

“我們會在火星表面設置一種儀器，并對火星進行測量。”為什么火星震動測量很重要?因為我們可以通過火星震動測量相應的聲信號，并觀察這些聲信號是如何隨著時間的推移而排布，進而估算出火星內核的大小，甚至推測出其內核是液體還是其他什么，同時大致估算出地幔和地殼的大小，這樣我們就可以知道更多關于它的內部結構，從而真正的幫助我們理解類地行星是如何形成的。”

Green was NASA’s Planetary Science Division director since 2006 before taking on his current assignment just last week. Back to the InSight Mission.

從2006年開始Green一致擔任NASA的行星科學部主任，直到在上周承擔目前Insight任務。

“But in general, it also has a human exploration part to it. For instance, we know Mars is quaking, we have seen with Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, from orbit, avalanches. And so, something is going on and it’s shaking the planet. And this is really exciting, because if humans go to Mars in our lifetime, which I anticipate they will, they’re gonna need to build structures. Those structures have got to be able to understand the environment and be safe. And so they’re gonna have to withstand whatever Marsquake environment is actually there. We will know what that is, we will know if it’s difficult or whether it’s relatively easy, but we’ll be able to accommodate it no matter what.

“但總的來說，它也有人類探索的部分。例如，我們知道火星在顫動，我們一直通過軌道、雪崩等觀測火星偵察軌道器。所以，火星上正在發(fā)生的事在一直影響著這個星球。這真的很令人興奮，因為如果有一天人類前往火星(我猜測是早晚的事)，他們將需要構建相應的結構，這些結構必須能夠適應環(huán)境并保持安全。所以他們必須承受住在那里的任何環(huán)境。通過觀測我們可以直到要選用什么結構，工程建造是否困難或相對容易，但無論怎樣我們都要適應這些環(huán)境。

“Now another experiment is a heat probe. This also sits on the surface and it pounds into the ground about five meters a set of thermistors that will measure the heat…and that will tell us how Mars is cooling off. You know, all our planets were built 4.5 billion years ago, they’re still cooling off from their initial accretion. So we’re going to see, well, gee, is like Earth’s geothermal ability, does Mars have an ability to, as it cools off, heat habitats for human exploration, or is it primarily very cool in the core, and we’ll know if it’s partially liquid or not, is that completely solid now. And all that will be put together in our models of the interior of Mars and as I said, it will also have some profound effects on what we do with human explorations next.”

“現在另一個實驗是熱探測器。它坐落在火星表面，并向地面5米深的位置布置熱敏電阻進行熱量測量熱…這將告訴我們火星如何冷卻。我們所有的行星是建于45億年前，它們仍然是基于他們最初聚積冷卻。所以我們將會直到火星是否有類似地球的地熱能力來冷卻從而成為人類的棲息地，或者火星球核內部是否非常寒冷，以及內部是否是部分液體還是固態(tài)。所有這些都將被整合到我事先提到的火星內部模型中，它也會對我們下一步的人類探索產生深遠的影響。”

If all goes well, InSight will land on Mars on November 26th.

如果一切順利，InSight將于11月26日登陸火星。