2025考研英语同源外刊:太空垃圾
On 4 March, humanity will set a record for littering when an old rocket booster smashes into the far side of the Moon. It will be the first time a piece of human-made space debris has hit a celestial body other than Earth without being aimed there.
3 月 4 日，当一个旧的火箭助推器撞击月球的另一侧时，人类将创下乱扔垃圾的记录。这将是人类制造的太空碎片第一次在没有瞄准地球的情况下撞击地球以外的天体。
The booster is probably part of a rocket that launched a small Chinese spacecraft, called Chang’e 5-T1, towards the Moon in 2014. Although Chang’e 5-T1 returned to Earth successfully, the booster is thought to have been zipping around chaotically in space ever since. Lunar gravity is now drawing it close, and will soon pull it into a fatal collision with the far side of the Moon. The smash-up is expected to produce a puff of debris and leave behind a small crater.
助推器可能是 2014 年向月球发射了名为嫦娥 5-T1 的小型中国航天器的火箭的一部分。虽然嫦娥 5-T1 成功返回地球，但据信助推器一直在四处飞行从那以后，在太空中一片混乱。月球引力现在正在将它拉近，并将很快将其拉入与月球远端的致命碰撞。预计撞击会产生一团碎片并留下一个小陨石坑。
The incident poses no immediate danger to humans or other spacecraft, but with at least half a dozen craft slated to reach the Moon this year, concern is growing about the lunar surface becoming an unintentional dumping ground.
该事件不会对人类或其他航天器造成直接危险，但今年至少有六艘飞船将到达月球，人们越来越担心月球表面会成为无意中的垃圾场。
“Public opinion has changed sufficiently in recent years that even a scientific lunar orbiter being deliberately crashed would still raise questions about impacts on the lunar environment, in a way it once wouldn’t have,” says Alice Gorman, a space archaeologist at Flinders University in Adelaide, Australia.
弗林德斯大学的太空考古学家爱丽丝·戈尔曼说：“近年来，公众舆论发生了很大变化，即使是故意坠毁的科学月球轨道飞行器仍然会引发有关对月球环境影响的问题，而这在以前是不会有的。”在澳大利亚阿德莱德。
Plenty of other spacecraft — and spacecraft bits — have hit the Moon (see ‘Moon crashes’). The first was the Soviet Union’s Luna 2 in 1959, which became the first human-made object to make contact with another celestial body when it crashed a little north of the lunar equator. The most recent was China’s Chang’e 5 lander (a different spacecraft from Chang’e 5-T1), which dropped an ascent vehicle onto the Moon in 2020 as it flew lunar samples back to Earth.
许多其他航天器——以及航天器碎片——已经撞击了月球（见“月球坠毁”）。第一个是 1959 年苏联的 Luna 2，当它在月球赤道以北一点处坠毁时，它成为第一个与另一个天体接触的人造物体。最近的是中国的嫦娥 5 号着陆器（与嫦娥 5-T1 不同的航天器），它在 2020 年将月球样本送回地球时将升空器送入月球。
Many artificial lunar impacts have been intentional crashes to bring an end to lunar-orbiting missions that have run out of fuel. Some have involved planned landings on the Moon, successful or otherwise. Others were for scientific purposes, such as when NASA slammed parts of large Saturn rockets into the lunar surface during the era of the Apollo missions in the late 1960s and 1970s, to study how seismic energy from the impacts rippled through the Moon.
许多其他航天器——以及航天器碎片——已经撞击了月球（见“月球坠毁”）。第一个是 1959 年苏联的 Luna 2，当它在月球赤道以北一点处坠毁时，它成为第一个与另一个天体接触的人造物体。最近的是中国的嫦娥 5 号着陆器（与嫦娥 5-T1 不同的航天器），它在 2020 年将月球样本送回地球时将升空器送入月球。
But never before has a piece of long-standing space junk — the booster will have been careering around space for more than seven years — collided with the Moon.
但从来没有一块长期存在的太空垃圾——助推器将在太空中飞行超过七年——与月球相撞。
The problem of space junk is well known for the region around Earth. More than 12,000 Earth-orbiting satellites have been launched since the space age began in 1957, and about 5,100 of those are still operational, according to the European Space Agency. Altogether, the agency estimates that there are more than 36,000 pieces of debris bigger than 10 centimetres across whizzing around in Earth orbit. These include dead satellites, as well as the remnants of past launches and anti-satellite-missile tests.
太空垃圾问题在地球周围地区是众所周知的。据欧洲航天局称，自 1957 年太空时代开始以来，已发射了 12,000 多颗地球轨道卫星，其中约 5,100 颗仍在运行。该机构估计，总共有超过 36,000 块大于 10 厘米的碎片在地球轨道上嗖嗖嗖嗖地飞来飞去。其中包括失效的卫星，以及过去发射和反卫星导弹试验的残余物。
Around the Moon, space is less crowded, but lunar scientists worry that it might not stay that way. A research team led by Vishnu Reddy, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona in Tucson, uses telescopes to regularly track the positions of more than 150 objects in the space around the Moon. Of those, at least 90% are junk, Reddy says.
在月球周围，空间不那么拥挤，但月球科学家担心它可能不会保持这种状态。由图森亚利桑那大学行星科学家 Vishnu Reddy 领导的一个研究小组使用望远镜定期跟踪月球周围空间中 150 多个物体的位置。雷迪说，其中至少 90% 是垃圾。
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