时差N小时:火星探测车任务届满五周年

Five years after the NASA rover Spirit landed onMars, the six-wheeled robotic geologist and its twinOpportunity are still on the job. Expectations werefar lower when Spirit made a bouncing landing in acocoon of air bags on Jan. 3, 2004, followed 21 dayslater by Opportunity: The goal was to try to operateeach solar-powered rover for at least three months.

美国航空航天局“勇气号”探测器登陆火星已有五年，这个六轮的地质探测机器人还有他的好兄弟“机会号”仍在继续工作。当2004年1月3日“勇气号”在茧形的气袋上跳跃着着陆，21天后“机会号”也尾随而来，这远比预期要好，因为原本只计划让这两个太阳能漫游者执行3个月任务。

"That's an extraordinary return of investment in these challenging budgetary times," EdWeiler, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said in a Decemberstatement.

美国航天航空局科学使命执行官埃德·维勒尔在12月的声明中说道：在如此富有挑战性的财政预算年代里，这次投资的回报实在太丰厚了。

Combined, the rovers have made more than 13 miles of tracks on Mars' dusty surface andsent a quarter-million images back to Earth. Their instruments have uncovered evidence thatMars was once a far wetter and warmer place than the frigid, dusty world it is now.

综合起来，探测器已经在火星满是尘土的表面行驶了13英里，并向地球传回25万张图片。机器人自带的仪器给出证据，证明火星表面曾经非常湿润，温暖，不像现在那样严寒，尘土飞扬。

Mission managers are pressing ahead with plans for more exploration even though NASAsays either rover could fail without warning.

尽管美航局表示探测器可能会毫无征兆地失灵，但任务管理人员仍在推行更多探测计划。