CNN News:地球軌道現(xiàn)存4000個退役衛(wèi)星，存在極大安全隱患

Sputnik One lasted about a year before it reentered Earth`s atmosphere and burned up. The thousands of other objects we`ve launched in the space don`t do that. They just hang out in orbit, spinning around the Earth until they possibly hit something. A lot of you saw the Oscar-winning movie "Gravity". Is it only a matter of time before space junk threatens space travelers?

人造衛(wèi)星一號在經(jīng)過一年旅行之后重新返回地球大氣層并燃燒。其它我們發(fā)射出的數(shù)千種發(fā)射器并不會有這種行為，他們只會沿著地球軌道保持旋轉(zhuǎn)直到撞擊到什么物質(zhì)。你們中可能很多人都看過奧斯卡獲獎電影《地球引力》這部片子，現(xiàn)在有一個問題，在太空垃圾襲擊太空旅行者之前僅僅存在一個時間問題嗎?

There`s about 5,000 objects in - large objects in Earth`s orbit, and there`s only about 1,000 that are functioning. You have bunch of electronics up there, you`ve got rocket engines that have to be used to put the object in orbit. I published my paper in 1978, which led to this Kessler Syndrome name. It`s a cascading phenomenon in the sense that when things break up, they produce both a very large distribution of small fragments and a smaller number of larger fragments. And those larger fragments are still large enough to go on and get a satellite and totally break it up. And so it cascades into - in increasing number of collisions as - with time. It`s a slow process, it`s not something that would normally happen as quickly as demonstrated in the movie "Gravity," but it`s still a real process.

目前為止，在地球運行軌道上大約存在5000個發(fā)射器，但是真正仍繼續(xù)工作的只有1000個。想要把各種衛(wèi)星探測器或者什么衛(wèi)星運送到太空的話你就得需要火箭來發(fā)射運輸。這就是地球軌道上產(chǎn)生這么多廢舊物品的原因。在我1978年發(fā)表的論文中，“凱斯勒現(xiàn)象”這一名詞引起了轟動。這是一種級聯(lián)現(xiàn)象，當太空中任何發(fā)射器發(fā)生分裂時，他們會同時產(chǎn)生非常繁多的細小碎片和少數(shù)巨大碎片。并且那些巨大碎片足以撞擊衛(wèi)星至其損壞。然后隨著時間的發(fā)展，它會越積越多引發(fā)更多的撞擊碰撞發(fā)生。這是一個緩慢的進程，不會像電影《地心引力》里所表現(xiàn)出來的一樣，但這仍是一個艱巨的任務，不容忽視。

The film illustrated the larger fragments breaking things up, but at the same time there would have been a lot more small fragments doing things like penetrating suits and causing leaks or penetrating the capsules that the astronauts were in causing leaks, making them uninhabitable. So, and that would be a much more probably thing to happen, actually, than the cascading that.

電影中展現(xiàn)出了事故發(fā)生過程，巨大碎片撞擊太空飛行物，同樣細小碎片也會穿透宇航服造成泄漏，或者破壞宇航員居住的太空艙至其無法居住。所以，這是一種比級聯(lián)現(xiàn)象更有可能發(fā)生的現(xiàn)象。

The space station was one of the first vehicles to be designed to be protected against orbital debris, and consequently, they had - in order to get the safety that they wanted, they had to add shielding to the older habitation modules. And that shielding is to protect them against roughly marble size objects traveling at about ten kilometer per second.

國際空間站是第一個被設計出來防止軌道出現(xiàn)碎片的，但是結(jié)果證明為了更好做好保護工作，他們想，不他們不得不對陳舊的居住設施添加防護設施，保護其免受大理石大小大約以每秒十公里移動的太空垃圾的撞擊。

They also had to worry about the larger stuff that would totally break up the space station - by satellite. And so they do collision avoidance in order to avoid that. But there`s a region between the one centimeter and a roughly ten centimeter, which is the largest thing that they can track where the space station is totally vulnerable, there is nothing they can do. They can`t see it coming. They can`t maneuver to get out of the way, and it were to hit a module, it would be catastrophic to the people inside that module.

同時他們還必須要擔心更大的漂浮物會撞擊毀壞空間站。所以他們必須做好防護措施。但是如果存在一個一厘米到十厘米這樣一個裂痕的話，他們就會意識到空間站是多么不堪一擊，他們將束手無措。他們甚至看不到發(fā)生的過程，也逃不出來，如果撞擊到任何一個模塊的話，對于里面的人員來說是毀滅性的的災難。