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How did you first hear about this particular debris?[qh]
你最初是怎么听说这块碎片的？[qh]
I heard about this when a journalist sent me an e-mail, and she just asked, "Hey, we heard about this space junk.[qh]
我是在一位记者给我发电子邮件时听说这件事的，她问了句：“嘿，我们听说了太空垃圾的事儿。[qh]
I'm not asking you to decide if it's real or not, 'cause it's probably fake, but can you just talk about space junk?"[qh]
我不是要你判断它是真是假，因为它可能是假的，但你能不能谈谈太空垃圾？”[qh]
Sure, okay. And then I just happened to see a photo of the space junk.[qh]
当然，好的。我恰好看到了一张太空垃圾的照片。[qh]
And my first thought was "wow, that looks just like the SpaceX junk that fell in Australia a few years ago.[qh]
我的第一想法是“哇，这看起来就像几年前落在澳大利亚的SpaceX垃圾。”[qh]
I wonder if it actually is real space junk.[qh]
我想知道它是不是真的是太空垃圾。[qh]
Oh, my gosh. This is right near me. That's so crazy."[qh]
哦，天哪。它就在我附近。太疯狂了。[qh]
And I e-mailed my collaborator, Jonathan McDowell, and he, almost immediately, confirmed: yep, there was a SpaceX Crew Dragon trunk that landed over Saskatchewan back in February.[qh]
我给我的合作者乔纳森·麦克道尔发了电子邮件，他几乎立刻就证实了：是的，二月份有一个SpaceX载人龙飞船的后备箱在萨斯喀彻温省上空着陆。[qh]
That could be it.[qh]
那可能就是它了。[qh]
So then, by the time I talked to this reporter, who just wanted to ask me general questions about space junk, I was like, "Wow, I found out everything.[qh]
所以，等我和这位记者交谈时，他只是想问我一些关于太空垃圾的大概问题，我当时想，“哇，我发现了一切。[qh]
This is amazing. I know exactly what piece it was and when it fell."[qh]
这太神奇了。我确切地知道它是什么碎片，以及它是什么时候掉落的。”[qh]
And she just wanted, like, very basic stuff.[qh]
而她只想知道一些非常基础的东西。[qh]
So I was way more excited than her at that point.[qh]
所以那时候，我比她兴奋得多。[qh]
Could you tell me a little bit more about how your collaborator was able to pinpoint what piece of space junk this was?[qh]
你能再告诉我一些你的合作者是如何确定这是哪一块太空垃圾的吗？[qh]
Yeah. So Jonathan McDowell is an astrophysicist who works at Harvard & Smithsonian.[qh]
好。乔纳森·麦克道尔是在哈佛和史密森尼工作的天体物理学家。[qh]
And he's an x-ray astronomer, but he just happens to love tracking satellite launches and reentries, and he has probably the best civilian database of all of that information, so he just keeps track of it all, so it was very easy for him to, you know--I just e-mailed and asked, Was there anything that fell over Saskatchewan in the last few months because this was over the winter, right?[qh]
他是一位X射线天文学家，但他恰好喜欢追踪卫星发射及其重返大气层的情况，在这方面，他可能拥有最佳民用数据库，所以他一直在跟踪这些信息，这对他来说非常容易——我只是发电子邮件问他，过去几个月有没有什么东西落在萨斯喀彻温省，因为这是冬天的事儿，对吧？[qh]
Nobody would have noticed until the farmers went out to do their seeding.[qh]
直到农民们出去播种，才会有人发现它。[qh]
So he was able to access that information because he's the one who keeps track of it.[qh]
他可以访问这些信息，因为他是负责跟踪它的人。[qh]
Yeah--not the companies that are dropping the space junk?[qh]
嗯——不是那些丢弃太空垃圾的公司吗？[qh]
No, not the companies that are dropping it.[qh]
不，不是那些丢弃它的公司。[qh]
There's no, like, government database that's public, right?[qh]
这方面，没有，比如说，公开的政府数据库，对吧？[qh]
It's all just done by Jonathan McDowell, and there's another really good database, CelesTrak, that's also just run by someone for fun.[qh]
这都是乔纳森·麦克道尔做的，还有另一个非常好的数据库，CelesTrak，也是由某人出于兴趣而运行的。[qh]
It's really wild that there's not better public information on everything that's in orbit and everything that's falling on us from orbit.[qh]
这太疯狂了，关于轨道上的一切以及从轨道上落到我们身上的一切卫星，竟然没有更好的公共信息。[qh]
Yeah, especially given that I, I know the scale of the problem is increasing.[qh]
是的，特别是我还知道，这个问题的规模仍在增加。[qh]
You know, what kind of numbers are we looking at in terms of space junk and potential space junk these days?[qh]
这些天我们在太空垃圾和潜在太空垃圾方面看到的数据具体是什么样？[qh]
Yeah, there's more than 10,000 active satellites in orbit, so functional satellites, and then there's tens of thousands of pieces of large debris.[qh]
轨道上有10000多颗现役卫星，也就是功能性卫星，然后还有数以万计的大型碎片。[qh]
There are hundreds of thousands to millions of pieces that are big enough to do damage, right?[qh]
有成千上万到数百万块能够造成损害的大碎片，对吧？[qh]
Everything that's in orbit is traveling at several kilometers per second, so faster than a bullet.[qh]
轨道上的所有物体都以每秒数公里的速度移动，比子弹还快。[qh]
So even a tiny screw or a fleck of paint, if it hits something, like a window on the International Space Station, it can do some serious damage, so tiny pieces of debris that we can't even measure from the ground can really cause serious problems.[qh]
所以即使是一个微小的螺丝钉或一点油漆，如果它击中了什么东西，比如国际空间站的窗户，也会造成严重的损害，我们在地面上甚至无法测量微小的碎片会造成的严重问题。[qh]
So going back to, you know, this particular space junk incident, can you describe what this debris looked like when it fell?[qh]
那再回到这个太空垃圾事件上，您能描述一下这些碎片掉落时的样子吗？[qh]
Yeah. Like, you can see pictures of it, but when you actually see it in person, it looks way bigger, and it's really terrifying to think about that just falling out of the sky onto the ground, right?[qh]
好的。你能看到它的照片，但如果你亲眼看到它，会发现它要大得多，想想这样一个东西从天上掉下来，挺可怕的，对吧？[qh]
So this piece of debris, the first one that, that he found, it's, like a semitruck hood, right?[qh]
所以这块碎片，他发现的第一块，就像二轮半拖车的引擎盖，对吧？[qh]
Like, it's really big, right? It's almost my height, too, like, leaning on a wall.[qh]
它真的超级大，对吧？它靠在墙上几乎和我一样高。[qh]
And it's covered with this carbon fiber that's sort of unraveling around the edges, which is probably why it didn't burn up.[qh]
表面覆盖着碳纤维，边缘处有些磨损，这可能就是它没有烧起来的原因。[qh]
SpaceX has said that (satellites) will burn up completely when they fall through the atmosphere, but these very large pieces did not, and I think probably part of that reason is because this carbon fiber sort of unraveled on the way through the atmosphere and slowed everything down.[qh]
SpaceX曾表示，（卫星）在穿过大气层时会完全烧毁，但这些非常大的碎片并没有，我认为部分原因可能是因为这种碳纤维在穿过大气层时松解了，减缓了坠落速度。[qh]
There was another piece that one of the neighbors found.[qh]
其中一个邻居还发现了另一样东西。[qh]
It was a very large piece of metal with, like, really long tendrils of carbon fiber hanging off of it.[qh]
那是一块非常大的金属，上面有长长的像碳纤维一样的卷须垂下来。[qh]
