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美"好奇號"昨登陸火星探索火星生存環境
Mars rover nears make-or-break landing attempt

[ 2012-08-07 08:50]

來源：中國日報網

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By the time the robotic Mars laboratory dubbed Curiosity streaks into the thin Martian atmosphere at hypersonic speed on Sunday night, the spacecraft will be in charge of its own seven-minute final approach to the surface of the Red Planet.

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The Mars rover Curiosity, on a quest for signs the Red Planet once hosted the building blocks of life, streaked into the home stretch of its eight-month voyage on Sunday nearing a make-or-break landing attempt NASA calls its most challenging ever.

Curiosity, the first full-fledged mobile science laboratory ever sent to a distant world, was scheduled to touch down inside a vast, ancient impact crater on Sunday at 10:31 pm Pacific time (1:31 am EDT on Monday/0531 GMT on Monday).

Mission control engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Los Angeles acknowledge that delivering the one-ton, six-wheeled, nuclear-powered vehicle in one piece is a highly risky proposition, with zero margin for error.

But on the eve of Curiosity's rendezvous with Mars, JPL's team said the spacecraft and its systems were functioning flawlessly, and forecasts called for favorable Martian weather over the landing zone.

After a journey from Earth of more than 350 million miles (567 million km), engineers said they were hopeful the rover, the size of a small sports car, will land precisely as planned near the foot of a tall mountain rising from the floor of Gale Crater in Mars' southern hemisphere.

Flight controllers anticipate clear and calm conditions for touchdown,slated to occur in the Martian late afternoon. There may be some haze in the planet's pink skies from ice clouds, typical for this time of year, with temperatures at about 10 degrees Fahrenheit.

"We're on target to fly through the eye of the needle," Arthur Amador, the Mars Science Laboratory mission manager, told reporters at a briefing on Saturday, as Curiosity hurtled to within 2.8 million miles (4.5 million km) of its destination.

Facing deep cuts in its science budget and struggling to regain its footing after cancellation of the space shuttle program - NASA's centerpiece for 30 years - the agency has much at stake in the outcome of the $2.5 billion mission.

Mars is the chief component of NASA's long-term deep space exploration plans. Curiosity, the space agency's first astrobiology mission since the 1970s-era Viking probes, is designed primarily to search for evidence that the planet most similar to Earth may have once have harbored ingredients necessary for microbial life to evolve.

(Read by Rosie Tuck. Rosie Tuck is a journalist at the China Daily Website.)

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(Agencies)

以檢測火星上是否曾存在生命組成物質為目標的美國火星探測器“好奇號”經過八個半月的航行，終于在上周日進入其航行的最后階段，登陸火星。成敗在此一舉，美航天局稱這是他們嘗試過的最具挑戰的一次著陸。

派往外太空的“好奇號”是第一座攜帶了一整套完整移動科學實驗室的探測器，將于太平洋時間周日晚上10點31分（美國東部時間1點31分/格林尼治時間周一早上5點31分）在一處巨大的古老隕石坑內降落。

洛杉磯附近噴氣推進實驗室的任務控制工程師們承認，將一個重達一噸、裝有六個輪子的核驅動探測器完好無損地送入太空是一項十分危險的任務，需要零誤差操作。

但是就在“好奇號”和火星相會的前夜，實驗室團隊稱探測器及其系統的運行堪稱完美，天氣預報也顯示火星登陸地區天氣狀況良好。

在“好奇號”從地球出發，航行了3.5億多英里（5.67億公里）后，工程師們稱他們期望這個小型跑車大小的探測器能夠按照計劃，精確地降落在火星南半球蓋爾隕石坑內一個山腳下的平地。

飛行控制器需要可見度高、穩定的著陸環境，登陸預定于火星時間傍晚時分進行。到時，火星的當地氣溫將為華氏10度，由冰云形成的粉紅色天空中可能會有霧霾出現，是一年中這個時候火星上的典型現象。

周六，當“好奇號”沖鋒至離目的地不到280萬英里（450萬公里）時，火星科學實驗室任務經理亞瑟?阿瑪多爾在一封簡報中告訴記者：“我們將完成穿越針眼的飛行目標。”

在面臨科學預算大幅削減，航天局取消其30年來的中心事業——航天飛機計劃之后仍需重新站穩腳跟的困境下，此次耗資25億美元的任務成果在很大程度上對航天局而言生死攸關。

火星是美航天局長期深度太空探索計劃的主要部分。“好奇號”是該機構自20世紀70年代“維京號”探測以來進行的首次天體生物學任務，其首要目的是探尋火星這顆與地球極為相似的星球是否曾蘊含可讓微生物繁衍的必要元素。