評論
打印
How did you first hear about this particular debris?[qh]
你最初是怎么聽說這塊碎片的？[qh]
I heard about this when a journalist sent me an e-mail, and she just asked, "Hey, we heard about this space junk.[qh]
我是在一位記者給我發電子郵件時聽說這件事的，她問了句：“嘿，我們聽說了太空垃圾的事兒。[qh]
I'm not asking you to decide if it's real or not, 'cause it's probably fake, but can you just talk about space junk?"[qh]
我不是要你判斷它是真是假，因為它可能是假的，但你能不能談談太空垃圾？”[qh]
Sure, okay. And then I just happened to see a photo of the space junk.[qh]
當然，好的。我恰好看到了一張太空垃圾的照片。[qh]
And my first thought was "wow, that looks just like the SpaceX junk that fell in Australia a few years ago.[qh]
我的第一想法是“哇，這看起來就像幾年前落在澳大利亞的SpaceX垃圾。”[qh]
I wonder if it actually is real space junk.[qh]
我想知道它是不是真的是太空垃圾。[qh]
Oh, my gosh. This is right near me. That's so crazy."[qh]
哦，天哪。它就在我附近。太瘋狂了。[qh]
And I e-mailed my collaborator, Jonathan McDowell, and he, almost immediately, confirmed: yep, there was a SpaceX Crew Dragon trunk that landed over Saskatchewan back in February.[qh]
我給我的合作者喬納森·麥克道爾發了電子郵件，他幾乎立刻就證實了：是的，二月份有一個SpaceX載人龍飛船的后備箱在薩斯喀徹溫省上空著陸。[qh]
That could be it.[qh]
那可能就是它了。[qh]
So then, by the time I talked to this reporter, who just wanted to ask me general questions about space junk, I was like, "Wow, I found out everything.[qh]
所以，等我和這位記者交談時，他只是想問我一些關于太空垃圾的大概問題，我當時想，“哇，我發現了一切。[qh]
This is amazing. I know exactly what piece it was and when it fell."[qh]
這太神奇了。我確切地知道它是什么碎片，以及它是什么時候掉落的?！盵qh]
And she just wanted, like, very basic stuff.[qh]
而她只想知道一些非常基礎的東西。[qh]
So I was way more excited than her at that point.[qh]
所以那時候，我比她興奮得多。[qh]
Could you tell me a little bit more about how your collaborator was able to pinpoint what piece of space junk this was?[qh]
你能再告訴我一些你的合作者是如何確定這是哪一塊太空垃圾的嗎？[qh]
Yeah. So Jonathan McDowell is an astrophysicist who works at Harvard & Smithsonian.[qh]
好。喬納森·麥克道爾是在哈佛和史密森尼工作的天體物理學家。[qh]
And he's an x-ray astronomer, but he just happens to love tracking satellite launches and reentries, and he has probably the best civilian database of all of that information, so he just keeps track of it all, so it was very easy for him to, you know--I just e-mailed and asked, Was there anything that fell over Saskatchewan in the last few months because this was over the winter, right?[qh]
他是一位X射線天文學家，但他恰好喜歡追蹤衛星發射及其重返大氣層的情況，在這方面，他可能擁有最佳民用數據庫，所以他一直在跟蹤這些信息，這對他來說非常容易——我只是發電子郵件問他，過去幾個月有沒有什么東西落在薩斯喀徹溫省，因為這是冬天的事兒，對吧？[qh]
Nobody would have noticed until the farmers went out to do their seeding.[qh]
直到農民們出去播種，才會有人發現它。[qh]
So he was able to access that information because he's the one who keeps track of it.[qh]
他可以訪問這些信息，因為他是負責跟蹤它的人。[qh]
Yeah--not the companies that are dropping the space junk?[qh]
嗯——不是那些丟棄太空垃圾的公司嗎？[qh]
No, not the companies that are dropping it.[qh]
不，不是那些丟棄它的公司。[qh]
There's no, like, government database that's public, right?[qh]
這方面，沒有，比如說，公開的政府數據庫，對吧？[qh]
It's all just done by Jonathan McDowell, and there's another really good database, CelesTrak, that's also just run by someone for fun.[qh]
這都是喬納森·麥克道爾做的，還有另一個非常好的數據庫，CelesTrak，也是由某人出于興趣而運行的。[qh]
It's really wild that there's not better public information on everything that's in orbit and everything that's falling on us from orbit.[qh]
這太瘋狂了，關于軌道上的一切以及從軌道上落到我們身上的一切衛星，竟然沒有更好的公共信息。[qh]
Yeah, especially given that I, I know the scale of the problem is increasing.[qh]
是的，特別是我還知道，這個問題的規模仍在增加。[qh]
You know, what kind of numbers are we looking at in terms of space junk and potential space junk these days?[qh]
這些天我們在太空垃圾和潛在太空垃圾方面看到的數據具體是什么樣？[qh]
Yeah, there's more than 10,000 active satellites in orbit, so functional satellites, and then there's tens of thousands of pieces of large debris.[qh]
軌道上有10000多顆現役衛星，也就是功能性衛星，然后還有數以萬計的大型碎片。[qh]
There are hundreds of thousands to millions of pieces that are big enough to do damage, right?[qh]
有成千上萬到數百萬塊能夠造成損害的大碎片，對吧？[qh]
Everything that's in orbit is traveling at several kilometers per second, so faster than a bullet.[qh]
軌道上的所有物體都以每秒數公里的速度移動，比子彈還快。[qh]
So even a tiny screw or a fleck of paint, if it hits something, like a window on the International Space Station, it can do some serious damage, so tiny pieces of debris that we can't even measure from the ground can really cause serious problems.[qh]
所以即使是一個微小的螺絲釘或一點油漆，如果它擊中了什么東西，比如國際空間站的窗戶，也會造成嚴重的損害，我們在地面上甚至無法測量微小的碎片會造成的嚴重問題。[qh]
So going back to, you know, this particular space junk incident, can you describe what this debris looked like when it fell?[qh]
那再回到這個太空垃圾事件上，您能描述一下這些碎片掉落時的樣子嗎？[qh]
Yeah. Like, you can see pictures of it, but when you actually see it in person, it looks way bigger, and it's really terrifying to think about that just falling out of the sky onto the ground, right?[qh]
好的。你能看到它的照片，但如果你親眼看到它，會發現它要大得多，想想這樣一個東西從天上掉下來，挺可怕的，對吧？[qh]
So this piece of debris, the first one that, that he found, it's, like a semitruck hood, right?[qh]
所以這塊碎片，他發現的第一塊，就像二輪半拖車的引擎蓋，對吧？[qh]
Like, it's really big, right? It's almost my height, too, like, leaning on a wall.[qh]
它真的超級大，對吧？它靠在墻上幾乎和我一樣高。[qh]
And it's covered with this carbon fiber that's sort of unraveling around the edges, which is probably why it didn't burn up.[qh]
表面覆蓋著碳纖維，邊緣處有些磨損，這可能就是它沒有燒起來的原因。[qh]
SpaceX has said that (satellites) will burn up completely when they fall through the atmosphere, but these very large pieces did not, and I think probably part of that reason is because this carbon fiber sort of unraveled on the way through the atmosphere and slowed everything down.[qh]
SpaceX曾表示，（衛星）在穿過大氣層時會完全燒毀，但這些非常大的碎片并沒有，我認為部分原因可能是因為這種碳纖維在穿過大氣層時松解了，減緩了墜落速度。[qh]
There was another piece that one of the neighbors found.[qh]
其中一個鄰居還發現了另一樣東西。[qh]
It was a very large piece of metal with, like, really long tendrils of carbon fiber hanging off of it.[qh]
那是一塊非常大的金屬，上面有長長的像碳纖維一樣的卷須垂下來。[qh]
