剑桥雅思18Test1Passsage3阅读原文翻译 Conquering Earth’s space junk problem 解决地球的太空垃圾问题
剑桥雅思18阅读第一套题目第三篇文章的主题为解决太空垃圾。文章可以分为两部分：第一部分介绍我们目前所面临的太空垃圾问题，第二部分给出具体的解决方案和这些解决方案存在的缺陷。虽然文章结构没什么难的，内容也浅显易懂，但因为篇幅比较长，在规定时间内完成可能有一些困难。下面是具体每一段的翻译。
剑桥雅思18Test1Passage3阅读答案解析 Conquering Earth’s space junk problem 解决地球的太空垃圾问题
剑桥雅思18 Test1 Passage3阅读原文翻译
老烤鸭原创翻译，请勿抄袭转载
A部分
Last year, commercial companies, military and civil departments and amateurs sent more than 400 satellites into orbit, over four times the yearly average in the previous decade. Numbers could rise even more sharply if leading space companies follow through on plans to deploy hundreds to thousands of large constellations of satellites to space in the next few years.
去年，商业公司、军事和民用部门以及业余爱好者将超过400颗卫星送入轨道，是过去十年平均数量的四倍还多。如果领先的太空公司按计划在接下来的几年内部署数百到数千个庞大的卫星群到太空，这个数字可能还会进一步急剧上升。
All that traffic can lead to disaster. Ten years ago, a US commercial Iridium satellite smashed into an inactive Russian communications satellite called Cosmos-2251, creating thousands of new pieces of space shrapnel that now threaten other satellites in low Earth orbit – the zone stretching up to 2,000 kilometres in altitude. Altogether, there are roughly 20,000 human-made objects in orbit, from working satellites to small rocket pieces. And satellite operators can’t steer away from every potential crash, because each move consumes time and fuel that could otherwise be used for the spacecraft’s main job.
如此频繁的卫星活动可能导致灾难。十年前，一颗美国商业Iridium卫星撞上了一颗已停用的俄罗斯通信卫星Cosmos-2251，产生数千个太空碎片，现在这些碎片威胁着低地球轨道上的其他卫星。该轨道的高度一直延伸到2,000公里。总共大约有20,000个人造物体在轨道上，包括工作卫星和小型火箭碎片。卫星运营商无法避开每一次潜在的碰撞，因为每次移动都需要时间并消耗燃料，这些资源本来可以用于完成卫星的主要任务。
B部分
Concern about space junk goes back to the beginning of the satellite era, but the number of objects in orbit is rising so rapidly that researchers are investigating new ways of attacking the problem. Several teams are trying to improve methods of assessing what is in orbit, so that satellite operators can work more efficiently in ever-more-crowded space. Some researchers are now starting to compile a massive data set that includes the best possible information on where everything is in orbit. Others are developing taxonomies of space debris – working on measuring properties such as the shape and size of an object, so that satellite operators know how much to worry about what’s coming their way.
对太空碎片的担忧可以追溯到卫星时代的初始阶段，但轨道上的物体数量正在以如此之快的速度增长，以至于研究人员正在探索解决这个问题的新方法。几个团队正在尝试改进评估轨道上物体的方法，以便卫星运营商能够在日益拥挤的太空中更高效地工作。一些研究人员开始编制庞大的数据库，其中包含关于轨道上物体位置的最准确信息。其他人正在开发太空碎片的分类方法，研究如何测量物体的形状和大小等属性，以便卫星运营商知道是否需要担心即将接近的物体。
The alternative, many say, is unthinkable. Just a few uncontrolled space crashes could generate enough debris to set off a runaway cascade of fragments, rendering near-Earth space unusable.’If we go on like this, we will reach a point of no return,’ says Carolin Frueh, an astrodynamical researcher at Purdue University in WestLafayette, Indiana.
许多人认为，另一种情况是不可想象的。只要发生几次失控的太空碰撞，就能够产生足够的碎片，引发连锁反应，使近地空间变得无法使用。“如果继续这样下去，我们将到达一个无法回头的点，”印第安纳州西拉斐特的普渡大学天体动力学研究员Carolin Frueh表示。
C部分
Even as our ability to monitor space objects increases, so too does the total number of items in orbit. That means companies, governments and other players in space are collaborating in new ways to avoid a shared threat. International groups such as the Inter-Agency Space Debris Coordination Committee have developed guidelines on space sustainability. Those include inactivating satellites at the end of their useful life by venting pressurized materials or leftover fuel that might lead to explosions. The intergovernmental groups also advise lowering satellites deep enough into the atmosphere that they will burn up or disintegrate within 25 years. But so far, only about half of all missions have abided by this 25-year goal, says Holger Krag, head of the European Space Agency’s space-debris office in Darmstadt, Germany. Operators of the planned large constellations of satellites say they will be responsible stewards in their enterprises in space, but Krag worries that problems could increase, despite their best intentions.’What happens to those that fail or go bankrupt?’ he asks.’They are probably not going to spend money to remove their satellites from space.’
随着我们监测太空物体的能力的增强，轨道上物体的总数也在增加。这意味着公司、政府和太空活动的其他参与者正在以新的方式合作，以避免共同面临的威胁。像国际太空碎片协调委员会这样的国际组织已经制定了太空可持续性发展指南。其中包括在卫星使用寿命结束时通过释放压力材料或剩余燃料来终止卫星，以防止发生爆炸。这些政府间组织还建议将卫星降低到大气层深处，在25年内燃烧或分解掉。但是，位于德国达姆施塔特的欧洲航天局的太空碎片办公室主任Holger Krag表示，到目前为止，只有约一半的卫星符合该25年目标。有计划发射大型卫星群的运营商表示，他们将在太空企业中扮演负责任的管理者角色。但Krag担心，尽管他们抱着最好的意图，但问题可能会恶化。“那些失败或破产的企业会怎样？”他问道。“他们可能不会花钱将卫星从太空中移除出去。”
D部分
In theory, given the vastness of space, satellite operators should have plenty of room for all these missions to fly safely without ever nearing another object. So some scientists are tackling the problem of space junk by trying to find out where all the debris is to a high degree of precision. That would alleviate the need for many of the unnecessary maneuvers that are carried out to avoid potential collisions.’If you knew precisely where everything was, you would almost never have a problem,’ says Marlon Sorge, a space-debris specialist at the Aerospace Corporation in El Segundo, California.
从理论上讲，考虑到太空的广袤，卫星运营商应该有足够的空间让所有这些卫星安全地飞行，而不会接近其他物体。因此，一些科学家正在尝试通过精准定位所有碎片来解决太空垃圾问题。这将减少许多避免潜在碰撞而进行的不必要的机动操作。“如果你准确的知道所有东西的位置，那么几乎就永远不会有问题，”位于加利福尼亚州埃尔塞贡多的航天公司的太空碎片专家Marlon Sorge表示。
E部分
The field is called space traffic management, because it’s similar to managing traffic on the roads or in the air. Think about a busy day at an airport, says Moriba Jah, an astrodynamicist at the University of Texas at Austin: planes line up in the sky, this article is from laokaoya website, landing and taking off close to one another in a carefully choreographed routine. Air-traffic controllers know the location of the planes down to one metre in accuracy. The same can’t be said for space debris. Not all objects in orbit are known, and even those included in databases are not tracked consistently.
这个领域被称为太空交通管理，因为它类似于管理道路或空中交通。想象一下机场繁忙的一天，德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校的天体动力学家Moriba Jah说道：飞机在天空中排队，按照精心编排的次序紧挨着彼此起降。空中交通管制员准确地了解飞机的位置，精度可达一米。但对于太空碎片来说，情况并非如此。并非所有轨道上的物体都是已知的，即使包含在数据库中的物体也没有得到持续跟踪。
F部分
An additional problem is that there is no authoritative catalogue that accurately lists the orbits of all known space debris. Jah illustrates this with a web-based database that he has developed. It draws on several sources, such as catalogues maintained by the US and Russian governments, to visualise where objects are in space. When he types in an identifier for a particular space object, the database draws a purple line to designate its orbit. Only this doesn’t quite work for a number of objects, such as a Russian rocket body designated in the database as object number 32280. When Jah enters that number, the database draws two purple lines: the US and Russian sources contain two completely different orbits for the same object. Jah says that it is almost impossible to tell which is correct, unless a third source of information made it possible to cross-correlate.
另一个问题是没有一个权威的目录准确列出所有已知太空碎片的轨道。Jah通过他开发的一个基于网络的数据库来说明该问题。该数据库利用了多个信息源，如美国和俄罗斯政府维护的目录等，以可视化的方式展示物体在太空中的位置。当他输入特定太空物体的标识符时，数据库文章来自老烤鸭雅思会绘制一条紫色线来表示其轨道。然而，对于一些物体来说，这并不完全适用，比如在数据库中被标识为32280的俄罗斯火箭残骸。当Jah输入该编号时，数据库绘制了两条紫色线：美国和俄罗斯的信息源对同一个物体展现出两个完全不同的轨道。Jah表示，除非有第三方信息源能够进行交叉验证，否则几乎不可能确定哪一个才是正确的。
Jah describes himself as a space environmentalist:’I want to make space a place that is safe to operate, that is free and useful for generations to come.’Until that happens, he argues, the space community will continue devolving into a tragedy in which all spaceflight operators are polluting a common resource.
Jah自称太空环保主义者：“我希望使太空成为一个可以安全运营的地方，为子孙后代提供免费和有用的资源。”在这个目标实现之前，他认为，太空界将继续陷入悲剧之中，所有的太空飞行运营商都在污染共同的资源。
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