月球陨石坑观察和感应卫星的撞击激起一个明亮的尘埃喷柱（见方块的中间），其中含有埋藏了数十亿年的水和冰。
The Moon Is Wet!
Slamming a spent rocket booster into the frigid, inky shadow of a lunar crater last month sent up a plume of dust laced with water, NASA scientists reported in a press conference today. Observers on Earth were denied a view of the fireworks in October, but "we found water, a significant amount of water," said LCROSS (Lunar Crater Observation and Sensing Satellite) mission principal investigator Anthony Colaprete of NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California. | 今天，美国航空航天管理局的科学家们在一次新闻发布会上报道：上个月，一个燃料耗尽的火箭助推器撞进寒冷阴暗的月球陨石坑内，激起一个夹杂着水分的尘土喷柱。 “月球陨石坑观察和感应卫星（LCROSS）”航天行动的首席研究人员、加州山景城艾姆斯研究中心的安东尼·科拉普利特说，尽管十月份地球上的观察者无法看到撞击所产生的爆炸，但是“我们发现了水，发现了大量的水。” |
After several decades of controversy, scientists now know that over billions of years, water from who knows where--impacting comets or perhaps the solar wind--can collect in some of the coldest places in the solar system. Whether the predicted amount of water is enough to sustain future astronauts--as either sustenance or rocket fuel--remains to be seen, however. | 经过几十年的争论，科学家们现在终于明白：在几十亿年的时间里，来源不明（或源自撞来的彗星，或源自太阳风）的水可以集中地存在于太阳系一些最古老的地点。然而，预测到的水量是否足以让未来的宇航员维持生活，是否足以为火箭提供燃料，仍需拭目以待。 |
The LCROSS mission worked to perfection, with the exception of the show that unfolded on Earth. Before the impact, NASA scientists had predicted that ground-based observers, even amateurs, would see the plume in the gap between two mountains. As it turned out, Colaprete said, the impact's plume of debris "was as bright as thought, but it was behind a hill" because the debris did not rise as high as impact modeling had suggested. | LCROSS航天行动的作用发挥到了极致，只是没有把撞击的实况展现给地球上的人们。在撞击之前，美国航空航天管理局的科学家们预料，地面上的观察者，甚至是业余的观察者，都可以通过两座山之间的缺口看到激起的喷柱。科拉普利特说：结果，撞击所产生的碎屑喷柱跟预料的一样明亮，但是却被挡在一座小山之后，因为碎屑上升的高度不象模拟中所显示的那么高。 |
The heavily instrumented LCROSS spacecraft, however, had a fine view of the rocket booster's impact and aftermath as it sped to its own impact 4 minutes later. LCROSS instruments delivered a "good, strong detection" of water, Colaprete said. At infrared and ultraviolet wavelengths, they gave clear indications of water vapor, water ice, and hydroxyl ions produced when sunlight splits water molecules. | 然而，满载各种仪器的LCROSS太空船清晰地观察到火箭助推器的撞击及其结果，4分钟之后该太空船也加速撞到月球上。科拉普利特说，LCROSS搭载的仪器进行了“出色而得力的水探测”。在红外和紫外谱段，LCROSS仪器清晰地显示出水蒸气、水冰以及阳光分裂水分子后产生的氢氧离子。 |
All told, LCROSS detected about 100 kilograms of water, Colaprete said. It came from a 20-meter-wide crater maybe 3 meters deep, but he declined to guess how abundant water ice had been beneath the impact site. Team members must still calculate what portion of subsurface ice actually rose into view and could have been measured, Colaprete noted. "It would probably be safe to say it's wetter than the Atacama Desert," the driest place on Earth, he said. Some remote sensing had suggested about 1% water ice by volume in the upper 3 meters, which was regarded as a substantial amount. Impact modeler and LCROSS team member David Goldstein of the University of Texas, Austin, says 1% "is not inconsistent with what's been observed. I haven't convinced myself yet whether it's 0.1% or 10%. I think we'll work that out." | 科拉普利特说，LCROSS总共探测出100千克水。这些水来自一个口径为20米、深可能为3米的陨石坑，但是他拒绝猜测撞击地点以下的水冰到底有多少。科拉普利特指出，研究小组成员必须还要计算出实际上升到表面的水冰所占的比例，以及本来可以测到的水冰比例。他说：“要说比阿塔卡马沙漠更湿润很可能是有把握的。”某种粗略的感觉表明，在接近表面的3米之内水冰的体积约占1%，这被认为是一个相当大的水量。德克萨斯大学奥斯汀分校的撞击模拟人员兼LCROSS研究小组成员大卫·戈尔茨坦称：“1%跟所观察到的情况并不冲突，我还没有确定含水量为0.1%还是10%，我想我们会把这个数字计算出来的。” |
Whatever the amount, the principle of cold-trapping water in permanently shadowed craters--as had been demonstrated for Mercury using radar--is now firmly established for the moon. The LCROSS results give on | 不管水量有多少，通过对永远处于阴影中的陨石坑进行撞击，月球水的冷捕集原理目前得以确立，就象通过雷达证实了水星的原理一样。关于这些水有可能来自哪里，LCROSS的研究成果只是略微给出一点提示。科拉普利特报道，光谱特征表明除了水之外，还有飘浮的化合物出现，如：二氧化碳、甲烷、二氧化硫和甲醇，这些正好是彗星和富含冰的小行星中存在成分。因此，数十亿年来撞击到月球上的物体，可能有零星的部分被月球保留了下来。 |
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