保护飞船和宇航员免受灰尘侵袭

Defending Spacecraft and Astronauts Against Dust 保护飞船和宇航员免受灰尘侵袭

Our Milky¹ Way solar system began as small pieces of star-created gas and dust. They came together to form the Sun, the Earth and other planets, and life as we know it. But not all the dust was used, and what remains² can be dangerous.

Scientists are studying this dust with a student-designed instrument on the American space agency’s New Horizons spacecraft. The agency is busy collecting information from the spacecraft this week in the first-ever flyby of Pluto³.

David James is a research assistant at the University of Colorado. Our reporter found him in one of the university’s laboratories on a recent day. He was inspecting the settings on a room-size machine.

“That’s one of the cryopumps. You have to continuously pull air out otherwise it will leak up to the atmosphere again”

Those pumps take air from a tunnel or passageway. The process helps scientists make dust on Earth move as fast as it would in space.

“We’ve even reached 107 kilometers per second is our fastest particle here.”

The tests may help scientists learn what causes dust to be created in space. It may also help them design spacecraft and equipment that cannot be hurt by dust.

David James says he became interested in space more than 10 years ago when he was studying physics in graduate school. A friend told him about the Student Dust Counter project.

“She said ‘I’m working on this project that’s really neat. It has a lot of real-world applications and, you know, it’s eventually going to be launched into space.’”

Tiffany Finley was also a graduate student when she began working on the dust counter project, in 2002.

“This opportunity came up and I said ‘What? You’re going to Pluto? I would love to be part of that.’”

The dust counter was designed to measure and count the dust that hit and flew by the New Horizons spacecraft as it traveled to Pluto. Tiffany Finley says such a device would usually be created by experts.

“As a student project, it’s one of the first where students actually got to build the hardware on the mission.”

She later became the manager of the dust project. Today, Ms. Finley is the Science Operations Manager for the New Horizons mission.

Mihaly Horanyi is a professor of physics at the University of Colorado. He also serves as the faculty⁴ advisor⁵ for the Student Dust Counter project. He says the counter did not cost as much money as it would have if a company built it because so many students were involved. More than 30 students have worked on the project.

The Student Dust Counter was launched with the New Horizons spacecraft in 2006. Six devices on the almost 5-billion-kilometer-long journey were designed to stay quiet during the trip. Now they are operating. They are sending color pictures back to Earth, and studying Pluto’s chemical makeup⁶. But the Student Dust Counter has been operating throughout the trip.

Professor Horanyi says dust counters help researchers better understand space dust, including the problems it may cause for space travelers. Even the smallest particles of dust can be harmful.

“Hundred-micron-size particles, like that thickness of your hair, if they were to hit the spacecraft at 10, 15 kilometers per sec(ond), that’s an end of mission event. It’s over. It would puncture⁷ a hole. It would destroy the mission.”

After a planned five-month-long exploration of Pluto, most scientific instruments on New Horizon will stop operating. But the spacecraft itself will continue flying past the edge of our solar system, and the Student Dust Counter will keep on counting. 

Words in This Story

solar system – n. the sun and everything that moves around it

neat – (informal) adj. pleasant, fun or interesting

real-world application(s) – n. something that can be used in life rather than only in theory or in a laboratory

hardware – n. computer equipment

sec(ond) – n. a unit of time that is equal to 1/60th of a minute

puncture – v. to make a hole in (something) with a sharp point

1 milky   

adj.牛奶的，多奶的；乳白色的

参考例句：

• Alexander always has milky coffee at lunchtime.亚历山大总是在午餐时喝掺奶的咖啡。
• I like a hot milky drink at bedtime.我喜欢睡前喝杯热奶饮料。

2 remains   

n.剩余物，残留物；遗体，遗迹

参考例句：

• He ate the remains of food hungrily.他狼吞虎咽地吃剩余的食物。
• The remains of the meal were fed to the dog.残羹剩饭喂狗了。

3 Pluto   

n.冥王星

参考例句：

• Pluto is the furthest planet from the sun.冥王星是离太阳最远的行星。
• Pluto has an elliptic orbit.冥王星的轨道是椭圆形的。

4 faculty   

n.才能；学院，系；(学院或系的)全体教学人员

参考例句：

• He has a great faculty for learning foreign languages.他有学习外语的天赋。
• He has the faculty of saying the right thing at the right time.他有在恰当的时候说恰当的话的才智。

5 advisor   

n.顾问，指导老师，劝告者

参考例句：

• They employed me as an advisor.他们聘请我当顾问。
• The professor is engaged as a technical advisor.这位教授被聘请为技术顾问。

6 makeup   

n.组织；性格；化装品

参考例句：

• Those who failed the exam take a makeup exam.这次考试不及格的人必须参加补考。
• Do you think her beauty could makeup for her stupidity?你认为她的美丽能弥补她的愚蠢吗？

7 puncture   

n.刺孔，穿孔；v.刺穿，刺破

参考例句：

• Failure did not puncture my confidence.失败并没有挫伤我的信心。
• My bicycle had a puncture and needed patching up.我的自行车胎扎了个洞，需要修补。