每天一篇經濟學人
「 再忙也不忘充電 」
-Dec 27th 2019 | 1187 words-
本次選文：Science & technology Bringing rocks back from Mars：A cosmic relay race
地球上「下單」，火星發來 「快遞」 不再是夢。
為了更好的探索火星，歐、美航天局（ESA和NASA）計劃合作，共同實施火星上取樣，並將其帶回地球進行研究的「火星取樣返回」任務（MSR）。
這項耗時數十年的任務，要求的技術先進而前沿，將為人類技術水平奠定新的標準。更重要的是，它還可能解開火星演化路徑中的種種謎團，為人類全面了解火星，移民火星提供更多可能。
Bringing rocks back from Mars：A cosmic relay race
The first stage of a Martian sample-return mission takes off next year
The idea, popular in science fiction, that alien life will do bad things to life on Earth if the two come into contact, is not restricted to the activities of malevolent extraterrestrial intelligences. In 「The Andromeda Strain」, a novel by Michael Crichton, the baddies are mysterious and deadly (but completely unintelligent) microbes that hitch a ride to Earth on board a military satellite. They start by killing everyone in the town of Piedmont, Arizona, and then wreak havoc in a secret underground government laboratory, as scientists struggle to understand and contain them.
→ malevolent adj. having or showing a desire to harm other people. 有惡意的;有壞心腸的;
→ extraterrestrial adj. connected with life existing outside the planet Earth. 地球外的;外星球的;宇宙的; extraterrestrial intelligence n. 外星人
→ The Andromeda Strain 美國電影，《天外來菌》，羅伯特．懷斯導演的一部具有懸疑性的科幻片，描述美國一枚太空艙墮落墨西哥荒郊小鎮上，導致鎮民全部離奇死亡，僅剩一老一少受重傷未死。特別營救小組將他們救回實驗室研究其病況，最終發現其中奧妙
→ baddies n. the person in a story or film who is considered to be evil or wicked, or who is fighting on the wrong side. You can also refer to the baddies in a situation in real life. (多指小說或電影中的)反角，壞人，惡人; baddie的複數;baddy的複數
→ hitch v. to get a free ride in a person's car; to travel around in this way, by standing at the side of the road and trying to get passing cars to stop. 免費搭車;搭便車; hitch a ride. 搭便車→
wreak v. to do great damage or harm to sb/sth. 造成(巨大的破壞或傷害)→
havoc n. a situation in which there is a lot of damage, destruction or confusion. 災害；禍患；浩劫→
contain v. to prevent sth harmful from spreading or getting worse. 防止…蔓延（或惡化）;Move one state north, to Utah, and at least part of that fiction may, some hope, soon become true. For Utah is the planned landing place of the first samples to be collected from the surface of Mars. Optimists like to think that those samples might contain traces, even if only fossil, of life on Mars. And in case they do, the samples』 ultimate destination will be a purpose-built receiving facility with level-four biosafety controls—the highest category possible.
→ level-four biosafety controls. 生物安全四級實驗室, 即密封和安全性等級最高的生物安全實驗室。可有效阻止第四級危害群微生物（即在人類可以引起嚴重或致死的疾病，但通常無預防和治療方法的微生物，如伊波拉病毒）釋放到環境中，同時為研究人員提供安全保證。The Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission intended to achieve all this will require three launches from Earth over the course of a decade, and five separate machines. The organisations involved—America’s National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA, and the European Space Agency, ESA—are each responsible for specific craft in the chain of what David Parker, ESA’s head of human and robotic exploration, calls 「the most ambitious robotic pass-the-parcel you can think of」.
→ over the course of. 在... 的過程中.
→ pass-the-parcel. 兒童遊戲傳包裹：聽音樂傳包裹，音樂停止時拿著包裹的兒童可打開一層包裹皮
On December 11th, at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco, space scientists and astrobiologists outlined the details of the MSR. The project will begin with the launch, next July, of NASA’s Mars 2020 mission. This will carry to the planet a successor to Curiosity, a rover that has been crawling productively over the Martian surface since 2012. The Mars 2020 rover, yet to be named, will land in a 45km-wide crater called Jezero, in February 2021. Its main purpose is to search for signs of ancient microbial life. Around 3.5bn years ago, Jezero contained a lake. Mars 2020 will drill for samples from the clay and carbonate minerals now exposed on the surface of what used to be a river delta flowing into this lake (visible top right in the picture).
→ Delta force n. 美國同名特種部隊
→ astrobiologist n. 天體生物學家
→ successor n. a person or thing that comes after sb/sth else and takes their/its place. 接替者;繼任者;接替的事物;
→ Curiosity 好奇號火星探測器, 美國國家宇航局研製的一臺探測火星任務的火星車，於2011年11月發射，2012年8月成功登陸火星表面。是世界上第一輛採用核動力驅動的火星車，其使命是探尋火星上的生命元素。
→ rover n. a person who likes to travel a lot rather than live in one place. 漫遊者；流浪者;
→ crater n. a large hole in the ground caused by the explosion of a bomb or by sth large hitting it. 隕石坑.
→ Jezero n. 名為Jezero的隕石坑，其直徑約49公裡，形成於火星的諾亞紀（約41-37億年前），內有明顯的三角洲和流水侵蝕痕跡，很可能是一個古老開放式湖泊乾涸後的遺蹟。在火星液態水充盈的年代，這裡的湖水可能至少有250米深。Jezero有存在生命跡象的可能。
→ carbonate minerals n. 碳酸鹽;碳酸鹽礦物. Jezero有著豐富的碳酸鹽、粘土等堆積物，相對於火星表面氧化和高輻射的環境會破壞可能存在過的生物痕跡，Jezero三角洲中快速掩埋的堆積物卻很有利於生命標記物的保存。
→ delta n. an area of land, shaped like a triangle, where a river has split into several smaller rivers before entering the sea. 三角洲. When the rover finds something that its masters want to bring back to Earth, it will hermetically seal a few tens of grams of the material in question into a 6cm-long titanium test tube, and then drop the tube on the ground. It can deal in this way with around 30 samples as it travels to different parts of the crater. Once it has dropped a tube it will broadcast that tube’s location to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, a satellite already on station that is armed with a high-magnification camera. This camera will take photographs of the tube and its surroundings, so that the tube can be found at a later date. The tubes are intended to be able to survive for more than 50 years on the surface of Mars, at temperatures less than 20°C.
→ hermetically adv. If a container has a hermetic seal, the seal is very tight so that no air can get in or out. 密封著（地）
→ seal v. to close a container tightly or fill a crack, etc., especially so that air, liquid, etc. cannot get in or out. 密封(容器);
→ in question. 被討論,有疑問的;相關的
→ Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter n. 火星勘測軌道器, 多用途火星探測器，於2005年8月12日由宇宙神-5運載火箭發射The next phase of the project will begin in 2028, when a 「fetch rover」 designed and built by ESA will be sent to Mars to find and collect the tubes. This rover will be small, nimble and ten times faster than any of its predecessors. It will also be semi-autonomous, which will permit it to spot, pick up and manoeuvre the test tubes into the interplanetary equivalent of a test-tube rack without detailed instructions from Earth.
→ nimble adj. able to move quickly and easily. 靈活的;敏捷的;
→ predecessors n. a thing, such as a machine, that has been followed or replaced by sth else. 前任;原先的東西;被替代的事物.
→ manoeuvre v. to move or turn skilfully or carefully; to move or turn sth skilfully or carefully. （使謹慎或熟練地）移動，運動；轉動
→ interplanetary adj. between planets. 行星間的Once the fetch rover has collected all the tubes, it will deliver the rack to a NASA-built craft called the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV). This rocket will have arrived from Earth, filled with fuel, in the same mission as the fetch rover. Once it has the samples, it will launch itself from the surface of Mars—the first ever rocket launch from a planet other than Earth.Once in orbit, the MAV will throw its basketball-sized payload overboard. Waiting nearby to intercept the cargo will be yet another craft, the Earth Return Orbiter (ERO), built by ESA. This will have been launched from Earth independently of the MAV-and-fetch-rover mission. The ERO will find, ingest and seal the payload, to avoid contaminating it with any organisms that might have hitched a ride all the way from Earth. Using a gentle, solar-powered electric propulsion system, the ERO will then take the payload back to Earth over the course of the subsequent few years.
→ payload n. the equipment carried by a spacecraft or satellite. （太空飛行器、衛星的）裝備 .
→ overboard adv. over the side of a boat or a ship into the water. 從飛船上落下.
→ throw sth overboard. 丟棄
→ intercept v. to stop sb/sth that is going from one place to another from arriving. 攔截;攔阻;截住.
→ ingest v. When animals or plants ingest a substance, they take it into themselves, for example by eating or absorbing it. [專業術語] 攝入；吸收；
→ contaminatie v. to make a substance or place dirty or no longer pure by adding a substance that is dangerous or carries disease. 汙染；弄髒;
→ propulsion n. the force that drives sth forward. 推動力;推進.When the ERO eventually goes into orbit around Earth (which will be in 2031, at the earliest) it will release the payload. This will be packed into a special, dome-shaped Earth Return Vehicle designed to carry the samples safely through the ferocity of atmospheric re-entry to a landing in the desert of Utah—whence they will be taken to their new bio-fortified home for examination. Once examined and deemed safe, the samples will then be distributed to researchers around the world for study.
→ dome-shaped adj. having the shape of a dome. 圓頂狀（形）的；穹形的；丘狀的.
→ ferocity n. exceptionally great power or force. 強大的力量
→ re-entry n. the return of a spacecraft into the earth's atmosphere. (太空飛行器的)重返地球大氣層
→ whence adv. from where. 從何處;從哪裡.It is, then, an extraordinary enterprise. But all of this complexity does raise the question of why researchers would go to so much effort to collect Mars rocks. The answer, as Michael Meyer, the scientific boss of NASA’s Mars Exploration Programme, told the conference, is that although, when you are on another planet, you have to hand all the rocks that you could ever want, you are also stuck with the handful of instruments that you took with you to look at them. Using sophisticated X-ray scanners or grinding samples up and feeding them through a chemistry set is not an option.
→ enterprise n. a large project, especially one that is difficult. （尤指艱巨而重大的）規劃，事業
→ be stuck with. <俚>被…纏住無法擺脫，遇到困難無法進行下去.
→ the handful of. 零星的, 少數的.
→ sophisticated adj. clever and complicated in the way that it works or is presented. (of a machine, system, etc. 機器、體系等) 複雜巧妙的；先進的；精密的.
→ grinding sth up v. to break or crush sth into very small pieces between two hard surfaces or using a special machine. 磨碎；碾碎；把…磨成粉.It is true that Martian rocks are already available for study, in the form of 200 or so meteorites that have arrived on Earth after having been blasted from the Martian surface by asteroid impacts. However, though these are geologically valuable they have little to offer about any putative Martian biology because they have spent millions of years travelling through the harsh conditions of space, being bombarded by radiation that will probably have destroyed any complex molecules within them that were made by living things.
→ meteorites n. rocks from outer space that hits the earth's surface. 隕石.
→ geologically adv. with respect to geology. 從地質上來說;地質學地;從地質學角度。
→ putative adj. If you describe someone or something as putative, you mean that they are generally thought to be the thing mentioned. 公認的；推定的.
→ bombard v. to attack a place by firing large guns at it or dropping bombs on it continuously. 轟炸;轟擊;A sample-return mission will not be cheap. Researchers from NASA and ESA, who have established a working group to harmonise technical efforts for the various stages of the project, estimate it will cost $7bn to complete. ESA already has approval for some of its parts. When ministers from its 22 member countries met in November to discuss the agency’s next three-year budget, they agreed to make €450m ($500m) available to pay for the project’s early stages. For its part, NASA expects to hear about funding for MSR in February 2020, as part of next year’s federal budget.NASA needs to confirm its role in the project as soon as possible if the planned timetable is to be met. If it is begun and not ended, though—perhaps because the money runs out halfway through—participants will have the comfort that the bottled-up samples are ready and waiting for collection whenever it is that politicians choose to loosen the appropriate purse strings.
→ loosen the purse strings 增加開支
隨著航空航天技術的進步，人類對於外太空的好奇，只增不減。自從1969年7月20日的傍晚，阿姆斯特朗懷著激動和忐忑的心情在月球上留下了第一個人類的腳印，人類便踏出了載人航天史上偉大的第一步。通過多次登錄月球，對帶回地球的許多月球的巖石和土壤的研究，讓我們對月球的年齡、來歷和歷史發展有了一個初步的了解。但是如果想通過了解月球的方式來了解火星目前是個非常困難的想法。首先，地月平均距離僅38萬公裡，而火星離地球最近也超過5500萬公裡，是地月距離的144倍，從地球出發去火星，單程就需要8個多月。其次，目前航空航天水平有限，探測器無法攜帶足夠往返地球火星的燃料。更不用提，在地球上遠程遙控火星上發射火箭。儘管有諸多現實因素的影響，美國國家航空航天局（NASA）和歐洲航天局（ESA）計劃聯合實施火星樣本返回任務計劃：將這顆紅色星球的樣本帶回地球上最好的實驗室進行檢測。這項火星樣本返回計劃中，預計包括四次發射任務（三次從地球發射，一次從火星發射），兩艘火星漫遊者和一次在火星軌道上距離地面控制超過5000萬公裡處的自主交會對接。將火星土壤樣本帶回地球需要通過三個不同的任務完成，同時也需要國際各方通力合作，在這過程中歐洲是一個重要的合作夥伴，美國國家航空航天局(NASA)下一代火星車「火星2020」採集並儲存樣本只是第一步。「火星2020」計劃2020年7月發射，2021年初著陸，對一個古老的河流三角洲 —「耶澤洛（Jezero）隕石坑」進行探索。除了展開搜尋火星生命跡象的任務之外，它還將收集土壤樣本，並將其儲存在在鋼筆大小的容器，為將來的樣品採集和返回地球做好準備。
ESA正在研發一種小型、靈活的「取樣火星車」（Sample Fetch Rover），以取回儲存在「火星2020」上的樣本並帶回裝入「火星上升飛行器」（Mars Ascent Vehicle）上足球大小的樣本容器裡。然後，「火星上升飛行器」將通過NASA登陸平臺發射升空，並將樣本容器送入火星軌道。
第三個任務將是由ESA的「地球返回軌道器」（Earth return orbiter）捕獲圍繞火星運行的樣本容器，將其密封在生物防護系統內，並帶回地球。
「地球返回軌道器」將使用ESA最近啟動的首個水星探測任務「比皮科倫坡」(BepiColombo)的技術遺產：兩者都使用離子推進器和多級可拆卸模塊。為了捕獲樣本容器，它還將利用ESA研製的自動轉移飛行器（Automated Transfer Vehicles）的技術遺產進行自主交會，這些自動轉移飛行器為國際空間站提供貨物、燃料和氧氣。
ESA火星樣本返回任務協調員桑傑•維詹德蘭(Sanjay Vijendran)總結道，「火星樣本返回將是火星科學和太陽系探索的巨大進步。這些樣本將從根本上促進我們對火星、太陽系歷史的了解，並將幫助我們更好地規劃未來的探索任務。」
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