消失了8年的印度首艘月球太空船， NASA找到了！

导读:作为印度首次发射的月球飞船1号，曾在2009年最后一次与地面联系之后失联。然而8年之后，美国宇航局通过最新的雷达定位技术，最终搜寻到该飞行器。

US space agency NASA has successfully located India’s first lunar spacecraft Chandrayaan-1 that lost contact with ground controllers on Earth eight years ago.

美国航天局NASA已经成功探测定位到印度8年前发射并莫名失踪的首艘月球飞船。

NASA found the spacecraft by using a new technological application of ground-based interplanetary radar and said it’s still circling some 200 kilometers above the lunar surface.

NASA通过陆基星际雷达的新技术发现了该宇宙飞船，并称它目前仍在月球表面上空200公里处盘旋。

This new technique also discovered an active spacecraft orbiting the moon, NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO).

这项新技术还发现了另一艘仍然围绕月球运行的飞船，那便是NASA的月球轨道探测器（LRO）。

LRO was launched on June 18, 2009, while India’s Chandrayaan-1 was launched on October 22, 2008.

月球轨道探测器LRO号发射于2009年6月18日，而印度的月船1号发射于2008年10月22日。

Finding LRO was relatively easy, as we were working with the mission’s navigators and had precise orbit data where it was located, Marina Brozovic, a radar scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory and principal investigator for the test project, said in a statement this week.

美国宇航局喷气推进实验室及其测试项目的主要负责人滨海布洛祖维克本周在一份声明中表示：“相对来说，找到LRO是比较容易的。因为我们一直与该任务的领航员一起工作并且有它位置的精确轨道数据。”

Finding India’s Chandrayaan-1 required a bit more detective work because the last contact with the spacecraft was in August of 2009.

“由于最后一次联络是在2009年八月，因此寻找印度的月船1号需要更多的侦察工作。”

More troubling was that the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft is very small, about half the size of a smart car, and about 380,000 kilometers away.

更麻烦的是，月船1号体积非常小，尺寸大约为一辆智能汽车的一半，并且远在380，000公里之外。

To find the spacecraft, the team used NASA’s 70-meter antenna at the agency’s Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex in California to send out a powerful beam of microwaves directed toward the moon.

为了找到它，该团队运用了位于加利福尼亚州的戈德斯通深层空间通信中心70米天线的设备，向月球发出强大的微波束。

Radar echoes bounced back from lunar orbit were received by the 100-meter Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia.

位于弗吉尼亚西部的100米绿色卫星望远镜接收到来自月球轨道的雷达回波。

NASA said these large radar antennas demonstrated that they can detect and track small spacecraft in lunar orbit.

美国宇航局表示，这些大型雷达探测器证明，他们可以探测和跟踪到小型的月球月球轨道探测器。

"Ground-based radars could possibly play a part in future robotic and human missions to the moon, both for a collisional hazard assessment tool and as a safety mechanism for spacecraft that encounter navigation or communication issues," the agency added.

该机构补充说，“不管是作为碰撞危险评估工具，还是作为航天器遇到导航或通信问题的安全机制，在未来的机器人和人类登月任务中，地面雷达都有可能会起到一定的作用。”