【经济学人】月尘是啥？丨2016.11.12丨总第741期

“PICKING up some dust.” So said Buzz Aldrin on July 20th 1969, as he and Neil Armstrong descended towards the lunar surface. It is not the most famous quote from that day. But the lunar dust kicked up by Aldrin’s and Armstrong’s descending spacecraft would go on to become a serious, if under-appreciated, problem for all of the Apollo astronauts.

1969年7月20日，Buzz Aldrin与Armstrong降落在月球表面，Aldrin对Armstrong说：“收集一些尘埃。”这句话在那天并不惹人注目，不过，因为Aldrin和Amrstrong驾驶的宇宙飞船着陆而扬起的月尘却确确实实带来了一系列的麻烦，如果低估了这个问题，那么它将会困扰所有阿波罗计划的宇航员。

Lunar dust consists of rock pulverised to the consistency of talcum powder by micrometeoroid impacts. The fragments are sharp, and because there is no weather on the Moon, and therefore no erosion, they stay that way. At the same time, the solar wind bombards the dust with charged particles from the sun, giving it a static charge that makes it cling to anything it touches.

因为受到微流星体的撞击，月球上的岩石变成了粉末状，而月尘就由这些粉末组成。这些碎片十分锋利，并且因为月球上没有天气之说，没有腐蚀现象，故而它们会一直保持着自己的棱角。与此同时，来自太阳的太阳风让这些尘埃带上了正负电荷，有了电荷它们就能够依附任何它们触碰到的东西。

• pulverise ：vi. 研磨；使……成粉末；变成尘埃

• talcum powder：滑石

• Micrometeoroid：n. 微流星体，微陨星体

• Fragment：n. 碎片，碎块，残片

• Bombard：vt. 炮轰，炮击；轰炸

The jagged dust fragments blackened spacesuits, causing them to absorb too much heat. They tore tiny leaks in joint seals, resulting in pressure leaks and risking total failure of the suits. They scratched visors, hindering visibility, and caked batteries, making them overheat. Tramped back into the spacecraft, they escaped into the air, from where the astronauts had little choice but to breathe them in and risk any potential health consequences.

由于这些锯齿状的尘埃碎片表面温度过高，接触到宇航服时会把宇航服烧焦、使其碳化变黑。尘埃碎片能在宇航服的接缝处撕开一个小口，使宇航服压力失衡而丧失保护作用。尘埃碎片还会划伤宇航服的面具，阻碍其视野，并且由于每粒尘埃都带有电荷，当它们彼此相连就相当于组成了电池组，开始加热。当宇航员回到太空飞船上之后，这些尘埃碎片就会分布在空气中，而宇航员们在不知不觉中被迫将它们吸入，这就对其健康造成了潜在的影响。

• Astronaut：n. 宇航员

Half a century later NASA is pondering a return to the Moon, as a stepping stone for missions to Mars and the asteroids. At the same time a growing number of private firms have ambitions to mine precious metals from those celestial bodies, too. One of the (many) problems that NASA and the space-prospecting crowd will have to solve is what to do about the dust. Fortunately for them Kavya Manyapu, an engineer at Boeing who has been working with scientists from NASA’s Glenn Research Centre, may have a solution.

半个世纪后，美国国家航空和宇宙航行局（National Aeronautics and Space Administration）将目光重新聚焦在月球上，因为月亮可以成为通往火星或是其他小行星的跳板。（期待您的翻译，明天会有针对这句话的读者试译详解哟~）那么，对于美国家航空航天局与希望进行太空勘探的人来说，首要解决的麻烦之一就是对付这些扬尘。对他们来说有一个好消息：波音公司的一位工程师Kavya Manyapu现如今正在与来自美国家航空航天局的格伦研究中心的科学家合作，而这个问题有望得到解决。

• private firm：n. 民营企业

• precious metal：n. 贵重金属

• celestial bodies：n. 天体

Ms Manyapu has come up with a new kind of spacesuit material that neutralises the dust in two different ways, one passive and one active. The passive strategy is a novel polymer-based coating that is applied to the top of an ordinary fabric spacesuit. It is impregnated with tiny dust-like particles of its own, which makes it harder for the real thing to stick.

Manyapu女士提出了两种除尘方式：有源除尘和无源除尘，使用一种新型宇航服材料消除尘埃碎片威胁。无源除尘是将一种新型以高分子聚合物为主的材料覆盖在普通太空服布料的外层，如同齑粉一样微小的尘埃碎片将会被吸附在这种材料上难以脱身。

• Be impregnated with：浸着

To get rid of any dust that does nevertheless manage to accumulate, the material also has embedded within it a yarn made of conducting carbon-nanotube fibres. Connect those to a power source, and the fabric can create an electric field that repels the charged dust particles. In tests, the two systems managed to repel about 90% of the simulated lunar dust that the material was exposed to.

有源除尘是将碳纳米管传导纤维做成的纱线与上述的高分子聚合物材料一同进行纺织，将织好的布料连接电源，此时这种织物就能够产生电场使尘埃碎片带上电荷，而在电场的作用下带上电荷的尘埃颗粒就会沿着碳纤维移动到相应的电极上。在实验中，上述两种除尘方式都能够消除材料表面近九成的模拟月尘。

• Embedd：adj. 嵌入式的

• Yarn：n. 纱线

That would be a useful trick for future lunar explorers. But as is traditional for technology developed for use in space, Boeing is keen on terrestrial applications, too. The firm reckons its dust-repellent fabric could find uses in medicine or clean-room manufacturing. But until it has patented the idea, the company is not going into specifics.

对于未来的月球勘探者来说，这也许会成为一项有价值的研究。不过按照惯例，在一种传统的技术发展到能在太空上运用之前，波音公司更希望能首先运用在地球上。该公司预计，能够找到这种防尘纤维，并且能将其运用在医疗或者是工业的无尘室中。虽然该项研究已经成功申请专利，但至今该公司并未提出具体的发展计划。

• Terrestrial：n. 人间的；地球的

• clean-room：绝对无尘室

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