Exploring Mars Triumph or disaster?

探索火星：胜利还是灾难？

THAT space flight is as much show business as science was confirmed on the evening of October 19th, when members of the ExoMars team put on the bravest of faces for a broadcast from their mission control in Darmstadt, Germany, about the arrival of the project’s craft at Mars. ExoMars is a joint endeavour by Europe’s and Russia’s space agencies. If science were its only criterion, team members would have been cock-a-hoop. Their main research vehicle, the Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), had successfully entered almost precisely its designated orbit around Mars, and looked well placed to do its job of mapping concentrations of the minor chemical components of the Martian atmosphere, which is composed mostly of carbon dioxide. This is an important task, for one such component is methane—and that may be a sign the planet harbours life.

当十月十九日晚上，ExoMars 团队的成员带着无畏的表情在其位于德国达姆施塔特的任务控制中心发布其火星飞船的时候，宇宙飞行不仅仅是科学同样也是生意的说法得到了证实。ExoMars 是欧洲和俄罗斯航天机构的一个尝试。如果科学是其唯一的评价标准的话，那么团队成员可以说是喜气洋洋的。他们的主要研究工具，微量气体探测器（TGO）成功地进入预计的环火星轨道，预期可以专注于探测火星大气中除了主要的二氧化碳之外的的微量组成部分。这是一个重要的任务，因为其中一个微量组成部分是甲烷，而这可能意味着火星上的生命存在。

Instead, there were the flat, controlled voices of those trying to come to terms with disappointment, while hoping against hope that their worst fears are wrong. The reason was that the other part of the mission, a cone-shaped landing craft called Schiaparelli, had abruptly gone silent on its way to the surface. Schiaparelli’s only scientific payload was a small weather station that would have run out of battery in four days. The craft’s real purpose was to test descent and landing technologies. And test them it did, apparently to destruction. But a brave little lander is always going to trump a clunky workhorse satellite in the public imagination—so, unless Schiaparelli does start talking again (which, at the time The Economist went to press, it had not), what is actually a pretty good success will seem a disappointment.

相反，当期望自身对于最糟糕的结果的逾期是错误的同时，他们内部任然有单调、谨慎的声音表示他们已经能够接受失败。原因之一在于任务的一个组成部分，一个被称为Schiaparelli 圆锥体着陆器在在着陆过程中意外地失去联系。Schiaparelli 的唯一科学设备就是一个电量只可使用四天的小型天气预报器。飞船的真实目的是为了验证下降和着陆技术。这个技术的验证看起来是失败了。不过在大众想象中一个小小的勇敢着陆器总是能够比笨重的卫星获取更大的关注，所以除非重新和 Schiaparelli 取得联系（在 The Economist 发稿时仍然没有） ，这次事实上颇为完美的成功计划可能被认为是一个失败。