國智清創雄安機器人研究院
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NASA has decided that humans are going back to the Moon. That’s great! Before that actually happens, a whole bunch of other things have to happen, and excitingly, many of those things involve robots. As a sort of first-ish step, NASA is developing a new lunar rover called VIPER (Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover). VIPER’s job is to noodle around the permanently shaded craters at the Moon’s south pole looking for water ice, which can (eventually) be harvested and turned into breathable air and rocket fuel.
美國宇航局（NASA）已經決定人類將重返月球。當然在登月之前，還有很多準備工作，令人興奮的是，其中很多事項都將涉及到機器人。作為第一步，美國宇航局正在開發一種新的月球探測器，稱為“毒蛇”（揮發物調查極地探索探測器）。Viper的工作是在月球南極永久遮蔽的隕石坑周圍尋找水冰，水冰可以（最終）被收集並轉化為可呼吸的空氣和火箭燃料。
VIPER is more than somewhat similar to an earlier rover that NASA was working on called Resource Prospector, which was cancelled back in 2018. Resource Prospector was also scheduled to go to the Moon’s south pole to look for water ice, and VIPER will be carrying some of the instruments originally developed for Resource Prospector. If it seems a little weird that NASA cancelled Resource Prospector only to almost immediately start work on VIPER, well, yeah—the primary difference between the two rovers seems to be that VIPER is intended to spend several months operating, while Resource Prospector’s lifespan was only a couple of weeks.
毒蛇號與美國宇航局（NASA）正在研發的一款名為“資源探礦者”（Resource Prospector）的早期探測器有點相似（可能就是根據這個基礎開發的），後者早在2018年就被取消了。資源探礦者還計劃前往月球南極尋找水冰，毒蛇將攜帶一些最初為資源探礦者開發的儀器。如果說美國航天局取消“資源探索者”號只是為了立即開始對“毒蛇”號的研究似乎有點奇怪的話，那麼，是的，這兩個探測器之間的主要區別似乎是“毒蛇”號打算用幾個月的時間進行操作，而“資源探索者”號的壽命只有幾個星期。
The other big difference between VIPER and Resource Prospector is that NASA has been gradually shifting away from developing all of its own hardware in-house, and VIPER is no exception. One of the primary science instruments, a drilling system called TRIDENT (The Regolith and Ice Drill for Exploring New Terrain, obviously), comes from Honeybee Robotics, which has contributed a variety of tools that have been used to poke and prod at the surface of Mars on the Mars Exploration rovers, Phoenix, and Curiosity. There’s nothing wrong with this, except that for VIPER, it looks like NASA wants a commercial delivery system as well.
毒蛇和資源探礦者之間的另一個巨大區別是，美國宇航局已經逐漸放棄自主開發他們所需要的設備了，毒蛇也不例外。其中一種主要的科學儀器，叫做三叉戟的鑽探系統（很明顯，是用於探索新地形的風化層和冰鑽）來自Honeybee機器人公司，它提供了多種工具，用於在火星探測車、鳳凰號和好奇號上戳戳戳火星表面。這沒什麼問題，除了毒蛇號，似乎美國宇航局還想要一個商業運載系統。
Space News reported that NASA is postponing procurement of a commercially-developed lander that would deliver VIPER to the lunar surface, meaning that not only does VIPER not have a ride to the Moon right now, but that it’s not very clear when it’ll actually happen—as recently as last November, the plan was to have a lander selected by early February, for a landing in late 2022. From the sound of things, the problem is that VIPER is a relatively chunky payload (weighing about 350 kg), meaning that only a few companies have the kind of hardware that would be required to get it safely to the lunar surface, and NASA has a limited budget that also has to cover a bunch of other stuff at the same time.
《太空新聞》報道說，美國宇航局正在推遲採購能將毒蛇號送上月球表面的登月器，這意味著毒蛇號現在不僅沒有機會登上月球，而且還不太清楚到底是否真的由它登上月球，就在去年11月，計劃是在2月初選定一個著陸器，在2022年底著陸。從事物的進展來看，問題是毒蛇號是一種相對較粗的有效載荷（重約350公斤），這意味著只有少數公司擁有安全到達月球表面所需的硬件，而美國宇航局的預算有限，同時還必須支付一堆其他東西。
This delay is unfortunate, because VIPER plays an important part in NASA’s overall lunar strategy. Finding water ice on the Moon is the first step towards the in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) robots necessary to practically sustain a long-term lunar mission, and after that, it’ll take a bunch more work to actually deploy a system to harvest ice and turn it into usable hydrogen and oxygen with enough reliability and volume to make a difference. We have the technology—we’ve just got to get it there, and get it working.
這種延遲是不幸的，因為毒蛇號在美國宇航局的整個月球戰略中扮演著重要的角色。在月球上發現水冰是實現實地資源利用（ISRU）機器人的第一步，這是實際維持月球長期任務所必需的，之後，要真正部署一個系統來收集冰，並將其轉化為可用的氫和氧，並具有足夠的可靠性和體積，從而產生影響，還需要大量的工作。我們有技術，但是首先要把它弄到那裡，讓它工作。
https://spectrum.ieee.org/automaton/robotics/space-robots/nasa-begins-testing-next-moon-rover
https://www.nasa.gov/glenn/image-feature/2020/nasa-s-new-moon-rover-tested-in-lunar-operations-lab
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編譯：J<4
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