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Mars Lander Will Peer Inside Planet

“Absolutely spectacular mission…and it’s not a rover, it’s a lander. It’s designed to land and deploy¹ several instruments.”

“这是一个绝对壮观的使命......它不是漫游者，而是着陆器。旨在登陆和部署几台仪器。“

Jim Green, NASA’s new chief scientist, talking about the InSight Mission to Mars. InSight [Interior Exploration using Seismic² Investigations³, Geodesy and Heat Transport] launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California the morning of May 5th. He spoke⁴ with Scientific American space editor Lee Billings, who recorded their conversation.

Jim Green是美国国家航空航天局新任首席科学家，他谈论火星观测任务。 InSight于5月5日上午，从加利福尼亚州的范登堡空军基地发射[使用地震调查，大地测量和热传输的室内探测]。他与美国科学家美国太空编辑Lee Billings交谈，他们记录了他们的谈话。

“One instrument…will be set on the surface and will measure Marsquakes. Now why are Marsquakes important? Well, Marsquakes, because we can get the acoustic⁵ signals and see how they are displayed in time, we can tease out the size of the core, even if it’s liquid or not, the size of the mantle⁶ and the crust, and compare those with the big terrestrial planet, Earth, that we know a lot about its interior. And this will really help us understand how terrestrial planets are made.”

“一台仪器......将被放置在地面上，并将测量火星地震情况。现在为什么火星地震这么重要?因为我们可以得到声音信号，并且看到它们是如何及时显示的，我们可以梳理出地震核心的大小，即使它是否是液体，地幔和地壳的大小，然后将它们与地球相对比进行研究，我们知道很多关于它的内部构造情况。这将真正帮助我们理解地球行星是如何制造的。”

Green was NASA’s Planetary Science Division director since 2006 before taking on his current assignment just last week. Back to the InSight Mission.

Green是美国宇航局自2006年以来，担任行星科学处处长，上周刚刚完成他目前的任务。接下来来完成InSight使命。

“But in general, it also has a human exploration part to it. For instance, we know Mars is quaking, we have seen with Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, from orbit, avalanches⁷. And so, something is going on and it’s shaking the planet. And this is really exciting, because if humans go to Mars in our lifetime, which I anticipate they will, they’re gonna need to build structures. Those structures have got to be able to understand the environment and be safe. And so they’re gonna have to withstand whatever Marsquake environment is actually there. We will know what that is, we will know if it’s difficult or whether it’s relatively⁸ easy, but we’ll be able to accommodate it no matter what.

“但总的来说，它也是人类探索的一部分。例如，我们知道火星正在震动，我们已经与火星侦察轨道器，在轨道上看到了雪崩现象。所以，一些事情正在发生，它正在摇动这个星球。这真是令人兴奋，因为如果人类在我们有生之年去火星的话，我预计他们会建立一些结构性框架。这些结构必须能够理解环境，并且是安全的。所以他们将不得不承受地震环境。我们会知道那是什么，我们会知道它是否困难，或者它是否相对容易，但无论如何，我们都能够适应它。

“Now another experiment is a heat probe. This also sits on the surface and it pounds into the ground about five meters a set of thermistors that will measure the heat…and that will tell us how Mars is cooling off. You know, all our planets were built 4.5 billion years ago, they’re still cooling off from their initial accretion⁹. So we’re going to see, well, gee¹⁰, is like Earth’s geothermal ability, does Mars have an ability to, as it cools off, heat habitats for human exploration, or is it primarily very cool in the core, and we’ll know if it’s partially¹¹ liquid or not, is that completely solid now. And all that will be put together in our models of the interior of Mars and as I said, it will also have some profound effects on what we do with human explorations next.”

“现在另一个实验是热探针，也位于表面上，它将大约5米的热敏电阻放入地面，以测量热量......这将告诉我们火星如何冷却。你知道，我们所有的行星都是在45亿年前建成的，它们仍然在最初的增长中冷却下来。因此，我们将会看到，呃，就像地球的地热能力，火星有能力在它冷却的时候，为人类探索加热栖息地，或者它是非常酷的，而且我们会知道它是否是部分液体，现在是完全固体。所有这些，将会融合到我们火星内部的模型中，正如我所说的那样，这也将对我们接下来，对人类探索所做的工作，产生深远的影响。”

If all goes well, InSight will land on Mars on November 26th.

如果一切顺利，InSight将于11月26日登陆火星。