2019年06月六级第3套长篇阅读匹配原文翻译及答案

A) Satellites used to be the exclusive playthings of rich governments and wealthy corporations. But increasingly, as space becomes more democratized, they are coming within reach of ordinary people. Just like drones (无人机) before them, miniature satellites are beginning to fundamentally transform our conceptions of who gets to do what up above our heads.

卫星曾经是富裕政府和富有公司的专属玩物。但随着太空日益民主化，它们正逐渐进入普通人的视野。就像之前的无人机一样，微型卫星正开始从根本上改变我们对于谁能在头顶上做什么的观念。

B) As a recent report from the National Academy of Sciences highlights, these satellites hold tremendous potential for making satellite-based science more accessible than ever before. However, as the cost of getting your own satellite in orbit drops sharply, the risks of irresponsible use grow. The question here is no longer "Can we?" but "Should we?" What are the potential downsides of having a slice of space densely populated by equipment built by people not traditionally labeled as "professionals"? And what would the responsible and beneficial development and use of this technology actually look like? Some of the answers may come from a nonprofit organization that has been building and launching amateur satellites for nearly 50 years.

正如国家科学院最近的一份报告所强调的，这些卫星在使卫星科学比以往任何时候都更易获取方面具有巨大潜力。然而，随着将个人卫星送入轨道的成本急剧下降，不负责任使用所带来的风险也在增加。这里的问题不再是“我们能吗？”而是“我们应该吗？”如果一小块太空被非传统“专业人士”建造的设备密集占据，潜在的弊端是什么？负责任且有益的技术开发和使用究竟是什么样子？一些答案可能来自一个近50年来一直建造和发射业余卫星的非营利组织。

C) Having your personal satellite launched into orbit might sound like an idea straight out of science fiction. But over the past few decades a unique class of satellites has been created that fits the bill: CubeSats. The "Cube" here simply refers to the satellite's shape. The most common CubeSat is a 10cm cube, so small that a single CubeSat could easily be mistaken for a paperweight on your desk. These mini-satellites can fit in a launch vehicle's formerly "wasted space." Multiples can be deployed in combination for more complex missions than could be achieved by one CubeSat alone.

将个人卫星发射到轨道听起来像是科幻小说中的想法。但在过去几十年里，一种独特的卫星类别被创造出来，符合这一要求：立方体卫星（CubeSats）。这里的“立方体”仅指卫星的形状。最常见的立方体卫星是一个10厘米的立方体，小到单个立方体卫星很容易被误认为是桌上的镇纸。这些微型卫星可以装入运载火箭中原本“浪费的空间”。多个卫星可以组合部署，执行比单个立方体卫星更复杂的任务。

D) Within their compact bodies these minute satellites are able to house sensors and communications receivers/transmitters that enable operators to study Earth from space, as well as space around Earth. They're primarily designed for Low Earth Orbit (LEO) - an easily accessible region of space from around 200 to 800 miles above Earth, where human-tended missions like the Hubble Space Telescope and the International Space Station (ISS) hang out. But they can attain more distant orbits; NASA plans for most of its future Earth-escaping payloads (to the moon and Mars especially) to carry CubeSats.

在这些紧凑的内部，这些微小的卫星能够容纳传感器和通信接收器/发射器，使操作员能够从太空研究地球以及地球周围的太空。它们主要设计用于近地轨道（LEO）——一个距离地球约200至800英里的易达太空区域，哈勃太空望远镜和国际空间站（ISS）等载人任务都在此进行。但它们也能到达更远的轨道；NASA计划其未来大多数脱离地球的有效载荷（特别是前往月球和火星的）携带立方体卫星。

E) Because they're so small and light, it costs much less to get a CubeSat into Earth's orbit than a traditional communications or GPS satellite. For instance, a research group here at Arizona State University recently claimed their developmental small CubeSats could cost as little as $3,000 to put in orbit. This decrease in cost allows researchers, hobbyists and even elementary school groups to put simple instruments into LEO or even having them deployed from the ISS.

由于它们非常小和轻，将立方体卫星送入地球轨道的成本远低于传统通信或GPS卫星。例如，亚利桑那州立大学的一个研究小组最近声称，他们开发的小型立方体卫星进入轨道的成本可能低至3000美元。成本的降低使得研究人员、爱好者甚至小学生团体能够将简单仪器送入近地轨道，甚至从国际空间站部署它们。

F) The first CubeSat was created in the early 2000s, as a way of enabling Stanford graduate students to design, build, test and operate a spacecraft with similar capabilities to the USSR's Sputnik (前苏联的人造卫星). Since then, NASA, the National Reconnaissance Office and even Boeing have all launched and operated CubeSats. There are more than 130 currently in operation. The NASA Educational Launch of Nano Satellite program, which offers free launches for educational groups and science missions, is now open to U.S. nonprofit corporations as well. Clearly, satellites are not just for rocket scientists anymore.

第一个立方体卫星创建于21世纪初，目的是让斯坦福大学的研究生能够设计、建造、测试和操作一个具有类似前苏联人造卫星（Sputnik）能力的航天器。自那时起，NASA、国家侦察局甚至波音都发射和操作了立方体卫星。目前有超过130个在运行。NASA的纳米卫星教育发射计划，为教育团体和科学任务提供免费发射，现在也对美国非营利公司开放。显然，卫星不再仅仅是火箭科学家的专利。

G) The National Academy of Sciences report emphasizes CubeSats' importance in scientific discovery and the training of future space scientists and engineers. Yet it also acknowledges that widespread deployment of LEO CubeSats isn't risk-free. The greatest concern the authors raise is space debris - pieces of "junk" that orbit the earth, with the potential to cause serious damage if they collide with operational units, including the ISS.

国家科学院的报告强调了立方体卫星在科学发现和培养未来太空科学家与工程师方面的重要性。然而，它也承认近地轨道立方体卫星的广泛部署并非没有风险。作者提出的最大担忧是太空碎片——环绕地球运行的“垃圾”碎片，如果与操作中的设备（包括国际空间站）相撞，可能造成严重损害。

H) Currently, there aren't many CubeSats and they're tracked closely. Yet as LEO opens up to more amateur satellites, they may pose an increasing threat. As the report authors point out, even near-misses might lead to the "creation of a burdensome regulatory framework and affect the future disposition of science CubeSats."

目前，立方体卫星数量不多，并且受到密切跟踪。然而，随着近地轨道向更多业余卫星开放，它们可能构成日益增长的威胁。正如报告作者所指出的，即使近乎失手的事件也可能导致“创建繁琐的监管框架，并影响未来科学立方体卫星的部署。”

I) CubeSat researchers suggest that now's the time to ponder unexpected and unintended possible consequences of more people than ever having access to their own small slice of space. In an era when you can simply buy a CubeSat kit off the shelf, how can we trust the satellites over our heads were developed with good intentions by people who knew what they were doing? Some "expert amateurs" in the satellite game could provide some inspiration for how to proceed responsibly.

立方体卫星研究人员建议，现在是思考比以往更多人能访问自己的一小块太空所带来的意外和无意后果的时候了。在一个你可以直接购买立方体卫星套件的时代，我们如何信任头顶上的卫星是由懂行的人怀着善意开发的？卫星领域的一些“专家爱好者”可以为如何负责任地前进提供一些灵感。

J) In 1969, the Radio Amateur Satellite Corporation (AMSAT) was created in order to foster ham radio enthusiasts' (业余无线电爱好者) participation in space research and communication. It continued the efforts, begun in 1961, by Project OSCAR- a U.S.-based group that built and launched the very first nongovernmental satellite just four years after Sputnik. As an organization of volunteers, AMSAT was putting "amateur" satellites in orbit decades before the current CubeSat craze. And over time, its members have learned a thing or two about responsibility. Here, open source development has been a central principle. Within the organization, AMSAT has a philosophy of open sourcing everything, making technical data on all aspects of their satellites fully available to everyone in the organization, and when possible, the public. According to a member of the team responsible for FOX 1-A, AMSAT's first CubeSat, this means that there's no way to sneak something like explosives or an energy emitter into an amateur satellite when everyone has access to the designs and implementation.

1969年，业余无线电卫星公司（AMSAT）成立，以促进业余无线电爱好者参与太空研究和通信。它延续了1961年由OSCAR项目开始的努力——一个美国团体在人造卫星发射仅四年后就建造并发射了第一颗非政府卫星。作为一个志愿者组织，AMSAT在当前立方体卫星热潮的数十年前就已经将“业余”卫星送入轨道。随着时间的推移，其成员学到了一些关于责任的知识。在这里，开源开发一直是一个核心原则。在组织内部，AMSAT有一种开源一切的哲学，使卫星各方面的技术数据对组织内的每个人公开，并在可能的情况下向公众公开。根据负责FOX 1-A（AMSAT的第一个立方体卫星）的团队成员表示，这意味着当每个人都能访问设计和实施时，无法偷偷将爆炸物或能量发射器之类的设备放入业余卫星。

K) However, they're more cautious about sharing information with nonmembers, as the organization guards against others developing the ability to hijack and take control of their satellites. This form of "self-governance" is possible within long-standing amateur organizations that, over time, are able to build a sense of responsibility to community members, as well as society in general. But what happens when new players emerge, who don't have deep roots within the existing culture?

然而，他们对与非成员共享信息更为谨慎，因为该组织防范他人开发劫持和控制其卫星的能力。这种“自治”形式在长期存在的业余组织中是可能的，这些组织随着时间的推移，能够培养对社区成员以及整个社会的责任感。但当新玩家出现，而他们没有在现有文化中深深扎根时，会发生什么？

L) Hobbyists and students are gaining access to technologies without being part of a long-standing amateur establishment. They're still constrained by funders, launch providers and a series of regulations - all of which rein in what CubeSat developers can and cannot do. But there's a danger they're ill-equipped to think through potential unintended consequences. What these unintended consequences might be is admittedly far from clear. Yet we know innovators can be remarkably creative with taking technologies in unexpected directions. Think of something as seemingly benign as the cellphone - we have microfinance and text-based social networking at one end of the spectrum, and improvised (临时制作的) explosive devices at the other.

爱好者和学生正在获取技术，而无需成为长期业余组织的一部分。他们仍然受到资助者、发射提供商和一系列法规的限制——所有这些都约束了立方体卫星开发者的能做和不能做。但存在一种危险，即他们缺乏能力去思考潜在的无意后果。诚然，这些无意后果可能是什么远未明确。然而，我们知道创新者能够非常创造性地将技术引向意想不到的方向。想想像手机这样看似无害的东西——光谱的一端是微金融和基于文本的社交网络，另一端是临时制作的爆炸装置。

M) This is where a culture of social responsibility around CubeSats becomes important - not simply to ensure that physical risks are minimized, but to engage with a much larger community in anticipating and managing less obvious consequences of the technology. This is not an easy task. Yet the evidence from AMSAT and other areas of technology development suggests that responsible amateur communities can and do emerge around novel technologies. The challenge here, of course, is ensuring that what an amateur community considers to be responsible, actually is. Here's where there needs to be a much wider public conversation that extends beyond government agencies and scientific communities to include students, hobbyists, and anyone who may potentially stand to be affected by the use of CubeSat technology.

这就是围绕立方体卫星的社会责任文化变得重要的地方——不仅仅是为了确保物理风险最小化，还要与更广泛的社区合作，预见和管理技术的不太明显的后果。这不是一项容易的任务。然而，来自AMSAT和技术发展其他领域的证据表明，围绕新技术，负责任的业余社区能够且确实会出现。这里的挑战当然是确保业余社区认为负责任的东西，实际上确实如此。这里需要一场更广泛的公众对话，超越政府机构和科学界，包括学生、爱好者以及任何可能受立方体卫星技术使用影响的人。