美国有线新闻 CNN 2012-10-06

 I'd say it's another piece in the puzzle, and it’s a great puzzle of what Mars used to be like, and it confirms earlier speculations¹ that there must been liquid water and lots of rivers. And now we know for sure.

So what do you do with this kind of information?

What you always do with data is to use it to calibrate² theories. Now if you have the data, you konw how data, you can see whether the theories that put up are right or not.

So, in terms of if there was water on Mars, we don't know how long ago, that could mean that there was potentially life on Mars, again, we don't know how long ago. How, what kind of impact does this have on us today? 

What this shows is that the landing circles we have chosen, because obviously you want to go where there was liquid water, because liquid water is a necessity for life as we know it. And what we are trying to understand is not only about Mars, it's just to see how common a pheomenon in the universe is life. So we want to see whether the Mars is unique or the earth is unique and to do that we have to study other planets and that's we are doing.

How long would you think it will take for us to bit of realize, to figure out what kind of life potentially there was, and how long ago this life form was there? 

Well, first of all, we don't know that there was life at all, and we have to confirm that, and even that would be a shocking news, and that really would be dramatic and would change every, the way we see ourselves as living beings.

But I think we won't know through this mission, and perpaps won't know even with the next missons. The Europes are planning to put their own on Mars and actually do dedicated³ search for life, but you don't even know that will come up with a result because Mars is big, you know, Mars is large. We have to really find the right place to look for life. 

You know, I'm curious, sir, when this news had come up, there are a lot of people on the news were very excited and very interested in this kind of discovery. I'm curious to know was it the same kind of reaction for you and for your colleague as well when these images were sent back.

Well, actually, even the first images of the landing site, you could see whether the rocket of the landing stage had cleared the bedrock off dust, you see these pebbles⁴, and, now this is confirmation⁵ that we thought. Yes, it's exciting and it really shows that the people who select this landing site did a good job.

1 speculations   

n.投机买卖( speculation的名词复数 )；思考；投机活动；推断

参考例句：

• Your speculations were all quite close to the truth. 你的揣测都很接近于事实。 来自《现代英汉综合大词典》
• This possibility gives rise to interesting speculations. 这种可能性引起了有趣的推测。 来自《用法词典》

2 calibrate   

校准；使合标准；测量（枪的）口径

参考例句：

• Pesticide levels in food are simply too difficult to calibrate.食品中杀虫剂的含量很难精确测定。

3 dedicated   

adj.一心一意的；献身的；热诚的

参考例句：

• He dedicated his life to the cause of education.他献身于教育事业。
• His whole energies are dedicated to improve the design.他的全部精力都放在改进这项设计上了。

4 pebbles   

[复数]鹅卵石； 沙砾； 卵石，小圆石( pebble的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The pebbles of the drive crunched under his feet. 汽车道上的小石子在他脚底下喀嚓作响。
• Line the pots with pebbles to ensure good drainage. 在罐子里铺一层鹅卵石，以确保排水良好。

5 confirmation   

n.证实，确认，批准

参考例句：

• We are waiting for confirmation of the news.我们正在等待证实那个消息。
• We need confirmation in writing before we can send your order out.给你们发送订购的货物之前，我们需要书面确认。