Hollywood Stunt Pilots to Retrieve Pieces of the Sun

 

David McAlary
 
For weeks, two helicopter crews have been practicing the mid-air capture of a parachute drifting down over the Utah desert.

When the event acttually occurs Wednesday, the parachute will be carrying grains of solar particles gathered by the U.S. Genesis spacecraft, which has been orbiting around an empty point in space more than a million kilometers away from Earth for the past 27 months. The spacecraft is to deploy¹ the parachute two minutes after re-entering Earth's atmosphere.

The two chase helicopters will hover² at 3000 meters, each prepared to be the one to intercept³ the parachute and its cosmic prize with a six-meter pole and hook.

The crews normally fly helicopter stunts⁴ for movies or help put out fires from above, but pilot Dan Rudert says this aerial fishing expedition is a unique challenge.

"It is an honor and also aviation history. This will actually be the first time a mid-air retrieval came in from outside the Earth's orbit," he says.

The package scientists are awaiting contains a large disk, about the size of a truck tire, that resembles a slice of a large beehive with dozens of six-sided sections.

The head of the U.S. space agency laboratory in California that operates the mission, Charles Elachi, says the unit has been deployed⁵ on the Genesis spacecraft, capturing high-speed, charged atomic particles blasted off the sun.

"We are going to bring a piece of the Sun down to Earth, and that is going to give us some fundamental understanding of our origin," he says.

NASA scientist David Lindstrom says the information the atoms provide about the solar system's origin will be different from that offered by space objects like meteorites⁶ or the moon rocks brought back by Apollo astronauts in the 1960s and 1970s.

"What we have been missing is the composition of the sun, which, after all, makes up 99 percent of the solar system. So this is what Genesis gives us, samples of the sun. These samples will allow precise measurements of the abundances of the elements and the isotopes⁷ in our solar system," Mr. Lindstrom adds.

The Genesis samples will be sent to laboratories around the world to be studied in ultra-clean rooms to avoid earthly contamination. The principal scientist for the project, Donald Burnett of the California Institute of Technology, says the analysis will be unprecedented⁸ in its technical scope.

"This is analysis at levels in many cases which has not been done before, and so we have had to develop our own new class of analytical⁹ instruments to do this," he says. " the world science community and the Genesis science team in particular has stepped up to enhance the capabilities¹⁰ to do this."

The helicopter pilots who must capture the samples say hooking the parachute from the Genesis spacecraft is a very difficult maneuver¹¹. If they fail, the capsule containing them will hit the desert at a speed of about 14 kilometers per hour with potentially damaging results.

"We do not know what the damage would be," this is George Carlisle, the chief navigator for the Genesis spacecraft. "If it lands on a perfectly¹² smooth, sandy spot, it most likely would cause little to no damage. But if it landed up against the base of one of the many mountains that are out there and it ran into something hard, it could hit with tremendous impact and really wreak¹³ havoc¹⁴ with all the samples."

But if all goes well with the Genesis sample capture, project officials say the first scientific results could be out in six months

David McAlary, VOA News, Washington.

注释：
helicopter 直升机
parachute 降落伞
cosmic 宇宙的
retrieval 挽救
resemble 象，类似
beehive 拥挤的场面
meteorite 陨星
isotope 同位素
contamination 污染
maneuver 技术动作
capsule 太空舱
tremendous 极大的

1 deploy   

v.（军）散开成战斗队形，布置，展开

参考例句：

• The infantry began to deploy at dawn.步兵黎明时开始进入战斗位置。
• The president said he had no intention of deploying ground troops.总统称并不打算部署地面部队。

2 hover   

vi.翱翔，盘旋；徘徊；彷徨，犹豫

参考例句：

• You don't hover round the table.你不要围着桌子走来走去。
• A plane is hover on our house.有一架飞机在我们的房子上盘旋。

3 intercept   

vt.拦截，截住，截击

参考例句：

• His letter was intercepted by the Secret Service.他的信被特工处截获了。
• Gunmen intercepted him on his way to the airport.持枪歹徒在他去机场的路上截击了他。

4 stunts   

n.惊人的表演( stunt的名词复数 )；（广告中）引人注目的花招；愚蠢行为；危险举动v.阻碍…发育[生长]，抑制，妨碍( stunt的第三人称单数 )

参考例句：

• He did all his own stunts. 所有特技都是他自己演的。
• The plane did a few stunts before landing. 飞机着陆前做了一些特技。 来自《简明英汉词典》

5 deployed   

（尤指军事行动）使展开( deploy的过去式和过去分词 )； 施展； 部署； 有效地利用

参考例句：

• Tanks have been deployed all along the front line. 沿整个前线已部署了坦克。
• The artillery was deployed to bear on the fort. 火炮是对着那个碉堡部署的。

6 meteorites   

n.陨星( meteorite的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Small meteorites have left impact craters all over the planet's surface. 这个行星的表面布满了小块陨石留下的撞击坑。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• One theory about the existence of extraterrestrial life rests on the presence of carbon compounds in meteorites. 地球外存在生命的理论是基于陨星上存在碳化合物质这一事实的。 来自《简明英汉词典》

7 isotopes   

n.同位素；同位素( isotope的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• the many isotopes of carbon 碳的诸多同位素
• Tritium is one of the mildest radioactive isotopes. 氚是最和缓的放射性同位素之一。 来自《简明英汉词典》

8 unprecedented   

adj.无前例的，新奇的

参考例句：

• The air crash caused an unprecedented number of deaths.这次空难的死亡人数是空前的。
• A flood of this sort is really unprecedented.这样大的洪水真是十年九不遇。

9 analytical   

adj.分析的；用分析法的

参考例句：

• I have an analytical approach to every survey.对每项调查我都采用分析方法。
• As a result,analytical data obtained by analysts were often in disagreement.结果各个分析家所得的分析数据常常不一致。

10 capabilities   

n.能力( capability的名词复数 )；可能；容量；[复数]潜在能力

参考例句：

• He was somewhat pompous and had a high opinion of his own capabilities. 他有点自大，自视甚高。 来自辞典例句
• Some programmers use tabs to break complex product capabilities into smaller chunks. 一些程序员认为，标签可以将复杂的功能分为每个窗格一组简单的功能。 来自About Face 3交互设计精髓

11 maneuver   

n.策略[pl.]演习；v.(巧妙)控制；用策略

参考例句：

• All the fighters landed safely on the airport after the military maneuver.在军事演习后，所有战斗机都安全降落在机场上。
• I did get her attention with this maneuver.我用这个策略确实引起了她的注意。

12 perfectly   

adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地

参考例句：

• The witnesses were each perfectly certain of what they said.证人们个个对自己所说的话十分肯定。
• Everything that we're doing is all perfectly above board.我们做的每件事情都是光明正大的。

13 wreak   

v.发泄；报复

参考例句：

• She had a burning desire to wreak revenge.她复仇心切。
• Timid people always wreak their peevishness on the gentle.怯懦的人总是把满腹牢骚向温和的人发泄。

14 havoc   

n.大破坏，浩劫，大混乱，大杂乱

参考例句：

• The earthquake wreaked havoc on the city.地震对这个城市造成了大破坏。
• This concentration of airborne firepower wrought havoc with the enemy forces.这次机载火力的集中攻击给敌军造成很大破坏。