人類所到之處都是一片狼藉，太空也不例外

人類所到之處都是一片狼藉，太空也不例外

Today, our species is responsible for more than 500,000 pieces of junk hurtling around Earth at phenomenal speeds, and if we don't start actively removing the largest pieces, the risk of collisions will only grow worse.

現(xiàn)在人類要為超過500,000個繞地球高速飛行的垃圾負責，如果我們再不積極行動起來清理大型垃圾，碰撞的危險只會越來越大。

"Imagine how dangerous sailing the high seas would be if all the ships ever lost in history were still drifting on top of the water," says Jan Wörner, European Space Agency (ESA) director general.

歐洲航天局(ESA)局長Jan Wörner說：“想象一下如果曾經(jīng)失蹤的所有船只都漂浮在水面上，在公海航行會有多危險。”

"That is the current situation in orbit, and it cannot be allowed to continue."

“目前軌道上就是這種情況，不能再任其繼續(xù)發(fā)展了。”

It's almost as if we need a tow truck to remove all the thousands of failed satellites from our orbit; incidentally, that's exactly what the ESA is working on.

就好像我們需要一輛拖車把成千上萬顆失靈的衛(wèi)星拖離軌道。順便說一句，這正是歐洲航天局正在研究的。

By 2025, the agency plans on launching the world's first orbiting junk collector, a four-armed robot that tracks down space waste like Pac-Man in a maze.

該機構計劃到2025年發(fā)射世界上第一個軌道垃圾收集器，這個4條手臂的機器人就像迷宮里的吃豆子的人一樣追蹤太空垃圾。

The first-of-its-kind mission, known as ClearSpace-1, will start out small, collecting only a single piece of space junk to prove the concept works. The target in this case is called Vespa, a leftover remnant from ESA's Vega rocket launch in 2013.

第一次這樣的任務被稱為ClearSpace-1(清理太空-1)，先執(zhí)行小任務，只收集單件的太空垃圾來證明這一概念的可行性。這一任務的目標是Vespa，是歐洲航天局2013年發(fā)射織女星火箭留下的殘骸。

This piece of junk weighs roughly the same as a small satellite and has a simple shape that should make it easy to grab with four robotic arms. Once it's safely in the arms of the garbage collector, it will then be dragged out of orbit and allowed to burn up in the atmosphere.

這件垃圾的重量幾乎相當于一顆小型衛(wèi)星，形狀簡單，機器人的四只手臂應該能很容易地抓取。一旦被垃圾收集器安全抓取，就會被拖出軌道，在大氣層中燒毀。