If anything’s alive on the ice-covered ocean world of Europa, a future NASA mission hopes to find it.
木卫二被冰覆盖的海洋世界中如果存在生命，在未来的NASA任务中希望能有所发现。
撰文/播音：史蒂夫·米尔斯基(Steve Mirsky)
翻译：郭鑫鹏
审校：丁可含
“And this mission would be NASA’s first mission that is directly tasked with searching for signs of life on another world since the Viking Spacecraft were given that task back in the 1970s on the surface of Mars.”
“自从二十世纪七十年代海盗号太空船在火星表面的任务后，这是NASA第一个直接以搜寻其他世界生命迹象为目标的任务。”
Kevin Hand of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
NASA喷气推进实验室凯文·汉德说道。
“We talk about finding, searching for signs of life on some of these ocean worlds, and in particular these geologically active ocean worlds with rocky seafloors like Europa.”
“我们讨论在一些这样的海洋世界寻找生命迹象，特别是像木卫二这种地质上活跃且有岩石海床的海洋世界中。”
Hand spoke February 17th at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston. He’s the deputy project scientist for the Europa mission, which plans to send a lander to the ice-covered moon of Jupiter.
2月17日，汉德在波士顿举办的美国科学促进会年度会议上讲道。他是木卫二计划的科学家副代表，它们计划将一个登陆器送达被冰覆盖的木星卫星上。
“We’re talking about environments where life could be alive today…so these ice shells may serve as a window into the oceans below and oceanic material may be coming up to the surface. Where a mission like a lander could actually sample that material directly…and I’m the pre-projected scientist for the for this mission. This is a mission that would reach the launch pad in the 2024-2025 time frame, it would land on Europa’s surface and operate for about 20-plus days.”
“现在我们讨论怎样的环境可能存在生命……所以这些冰壳可能作为底下海洋的窗口，海洋物质可能来到表面上。通过一个登陆任务便可以直接对其进行采样……我是这个任务的前期项目科学家。这个任务将会在2024到2025年进入发射阶段，它将会在木卫二表面着陆并工作20多天。”
The instrumentation that gets sent to Europa needs to be recognize signs of life in minute amounts.
送到木卫二上的仪器需要识别出微弱的生命信号。
“A picomole of organics per gram of sample is one key requirement. Being able to detect cell number abundances to as low of a level as 100 cells per milliliter of ice acquired from Europa’s surface. We reached that benchmark by comparison to subglacial Lake Vostok here on Earth. And the size that the microscope in the model payload would need to be able characterize is down to a 0.2 micron diameter for any putative organisms collected in a surface sample of Europa. This mission is a bold, very exciting mission that marks NASA’s return to the direct search for life via in situ capabilities on a potentially inhabited ocean world beyond Earth.”
“每克样品一皮摩尔有机物是一个关键指标要求。能够在木卫二表面获取的冰样本中最低检测出每毫升100个细胞数目。这个基准是通过比较地球上的冰下沃斯托克湖得出。模型有效载荷中显微镜能够在木卫二表面收集直径0.2微米的假定微生物。这是一个大胆且激动人心的任务，它标志着NASA回归到实地研究中，直接在地球外潜在的海洋栖息地中寻找生命。”
-Steve Mirsky
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