Exploring Mars Triumph or disaster?

探索火星：胜利还是灾难？

The search the TGO will engage in is also, in its way, based on a lingering hope— one which started, albeit accidentally, with the man the landing craft was named after. This hope is that Mars is inhabited. When Giovanni Schiaparelli, a 19th-century Italian astronomer, drew the first maps of Mars (pictured on previous page), he described some linear features on them as canali. This word can translate into English either as channels (natural) or as canals (artificial). Schiaparelli had intended the former, but the ambiguity spawned the romantic idea that Mars was home to a dying civilisation desperately piping water from the planet’s polar ice caps.

TGO 在前行的路上开展的探测同样也是基于一个渺茫的希望，也就是着陆探测器因此命名的那个人所怀抱着的希望。这个希望就是火星上有生命存在。当 19 世纪的意大利天文学家 Giovanni Schiaparelli 描绘出第一张火星地貌图时，他将一些火星上的直线部分称为 canali 。这个词翻译过来的意思是峡谷（自然形成）或者是运河（人工建造）。Schiaparelli 倾向于前一种表达，但是这种意思上的歧义带来了一种浪漫的幻想也即是火星是一种即将毁灭的文明的家园，他们通过运河从星球的极地冰盖运送水源。

There are no canals on Mars, and certainly no dying civilisation. But the hopeful suggest that there may be life there of the microbial sort—and that if there is, it may explain the traces of methane in the planet’s atmosphere. That gas’s source is certainly a mystery, for methane is broken down rapidly by ultraviolet light, and this reaches Mars from the sun in abundance because the planet’s atmosphere is too scanty to block it. That means any methane in the Martian air should quickly disappear. But it does not. This suggests something is replenishing the gas. The process involved may be geological. But maybe, as is the case for most of the methane in Earth’s rather thicker atmosphere, it is actually biological.

火星上并不存在运河当然也没有濒临毁灭的文明。但同样也有充满愿景的想法认为其上存在类似微生物的生命形式，如果确实存在，那么这就可以解释火星大气中甲烷存在的现象。这种气体的源头仍然是个谜题，因为甲烷会迅速地被紫外线所分解，而由于火星大气十分稀薄，使得太阳照射到火星时仍然存在大量紫外线。这就意味着火星大气中的甲烷应该迅速地小时。然而并不是。这就意味着某些东西在不停产生甲烷。这个过程或许是地质原因。但是也有可能，以地球为例而言，拥有更加厚的大气层但是大部分的甲烷来自于生物原因。

One of the TGO’s jobs is therefore to map methane concentrations in the Martian atmosphere. That may point to promising, methane-generating landing spots for a follow-up probe—for ExoMars is a mission in two parts. The second act will be a Russian-built lander and a European rover. These are planned to arrive in 2021. The rover will be equipped to analyse the Martian regolith (the layer of rock fragments on the planet’s surface that passes for soil) for signs of biological activity.

因此 TGO 的一项工作便是描绘出火星大气中甲烷的聚集区。这就为后续的探测器提供了关于甲烷产生地点的信息，毕竟对于 ExoMars 而言，任务 是由两部分组成的。任务的第二部分将是俄罗斯制造的着陆器以及欧洲制造的巡视器。该任务计划于 2021 年达到火星。巡视器将会配备火星浮土分析器（被认为是土壤的岩石基层）来探测生物活动。

To do that, though, it will have to land successfully. And, as Schiaparelli’s apparent fate shows, landing on Mars is hard. With luck, data the probe broadcast on its way down, before silence enveloped it, will tell engineers what went wrong, and help them stop the same thing happening to the next lander. In the meantime, TGO will continue to orbit, and the methane data will flow in.

为了这个目的，就必须做到成功的着陆。但从目前 Schiaparelli 的表现而言，登陆火星任务艰巨。如果幸运的话探测器在着陆过程中发送的信息会在其失去信号之前传输给工程师，最终可以得知问题原因，然后避免在下次任务时重蹈覆辙。与此同时，TGO 仍然会在轨道运行来探测甲烷的数据信息。