I thought I'd start with telling you or showing you the people who started [Jet Propulsion Lab]. When they were a bunch of kids, they were kind of very imaginative, very adventurous, as they were trying at Caltech to mix chemicals and see which one blows up more. Well, I don't recommend that you try to do that now. Naturally, they blew up a shack, and Caltech, well, then, hey, you go to the Arroyo and really do all your tests in there.
ジェット推進研究所(JPL)の 設立者の話から始めましょう 彼らは若い頃 とても想像力と冒険心がありました カリフォルニア工科大学では 化学薬品を混ぜて爆破力を競いました 同じ事を試すのはお勧めしませんが 当然彼らは小屋を吹き飛ばし 大学は実験を続ける彼らを僻地に追放しました
So, that's what we call our first five employees during the tea break, you know, in here. As I said, they were adventurous people. As a matter of fact, one of them, who was, kind of, part of a cult which was not too far from here on Orange Grove, and unfortunately he blew up himself because he kept mixing chemicals and trying to figure out which ones were the best chemicals. So, that gives you a kind of flavor of the kind of people we have there. We try to avoid blowing ourselves up.
これが「最初の5人の従業員」と呼ぶ メンバーの休憩中の様子です 申し上げたように彼らは冒険的です そのうちの一人は まるでカルトのごとく ここからそう遠くないオレンジグローブで 最高の化合物を調合している最中に 痛ましい爆発事故を起こしました どんな種類の人達か ご理解頂けるでしょう? 事故はもう起こさないよう注意しています
This one I thought I'd show you. Guess which one is a JPL employee in the heart of this crowd. I tried to come like him this morning, but as I walked out, then it was too cold, and I said, I'd better put my shirt back on. But more importantly, the reason I wanted to show this picture: look where the other people are looking, and look where he is looking. Wherever anybody else looks, look somewhere else, and go do something different, you know, and doing that. And that's kind of what has been the spirit of what we are doing.
これをご覧ください この中でJPL従業員は誰だと思いますか? 今朝は彼を真似して来ようとしましたが 外に出たらあまりに寒かったので シャツを着ることにしました それよりも この写真をお見せしたかった理由は 他の人が見ている方向と 彼が見ている方向に注目して欲しいからです 他の誰がどこを見ていようと 別方向を見て違う事を試し続ける それこそが私たちの心意気です
And I want to tell you a quote from Ralph Emerson that one of my colleagues, you know, put on my wall in my office, and it says, "Do not go where the path may lead. Go instead where there is no path, and leave a trail." And that's my recommendation to all of you: look what everybody is doing, what they are doing; go do something completely different. Don't try to improve a little bit on what somebody else is doing, because that doesn't get you very far.
同僚のラルフ・エマーソンが 私のオフィスに張った言葉を引用します 「行き先の決まった道を歩くのはやめよう 未踏の地に足跡を残していこう」 これは皆さんにぜひお勧めしたいです 皆が何をしているか観察して 全く違うことを試すのです 他人の仕事を見て少し改良を加えても 大したことはできません
In our early days we used to work a lot on rockets, but we also used to have a lot of parties, you know. As you can see, one of our parties, you know, a few years ago. But then a big difference happened about 50 years ago, after Sputnik was launched. We launched the first American satellite, and that's the one you see on the left in there. And here we made 180 degrees change: we changed from a rocket house to be an exploration house. And that was done over a period of a couple of years, and now we are the leading organization, you know, exploring space on all of your behalf.
当初はロケット開発に専念しました 一方でパーディもたくさんしました 数年前のパーティの様子です しかし50年前にスプートニクが発射された後は 大きな変化が訪れました アメリカ初の衛星を発射したのです 左側にご覧頂いているものです そして180度の方針転換をした ロケット開発から探査機関へ変換しました 変換は数年間で成し遂げ 今や国を代表する有数の 宇宙探査機関になりました
But even when we did that, we had to remind ourselves, sometimes there are setbacks. So you see, on the bottom, that rocket was supposed to go upward; somehow it ended going sideways. So that's what we call the misguided missile. But then also, just to celebrate that, we started an event at JPL for "Miss Guided Missile."
ただ その間も過去の挫折を 記憶に留める必要がありました 下の方にあるのは 上昇すべきロケットが なぜか横倒しになってしまいました いわば誘導失敗したミサイルです この出来事を記念して 「ミス誘導ミサイル」コンテストを始めました
So, we used to have a celebration every year and select -- there used to be competition and parades and so on. It's not very appropriate to do it now. Some people tell me to do it; I think, well, that's not really proper, you know, these days. So, we do something a little bit more serious. And that's what you see in the last Rose Bowl, you know, when we entered one of the floats. That's more on the play side. And on the right side, that's the Rover just before we finished its testing to take it to the Cape to launch it. These are the Rovers up here that you have on Mars now. So that kind of tells you about, kind of, the fun things, you know, and the serious things that we try to do. But I said I'm going to show you a short clip of one of our employees to kind of give you an idea about some of the talent that we have.
毎年お祭りをして勝者を選ぶ コンテストやパレード等をしたものです 今では適切ではなくなりました たしかに最近の風潮を考えると上品とは言えません そこで少し真面目になりました 前回のローズボールに参加した時 皆さんがご覧になったものです これはお遊びですが 右側のローバーは 最終テストを経て打ち上げのため ケープカナベラルに輸送する直前です 火星に軟着陸した実物です 楽しみながら同時に真剣に仕事する 様子がお分かりでしょう これから短いビデオをご紹介します 私たちの従業員の一人が持つ才能が お分かりになると思います
Video: Morgan Hendry: Beware of Safety is an instrumental rock band. It branches on more the experimental side. There's the improvisational side of jazz. There's the heavy-hitting sound of rock. Being able to treat sound as an instrument, and be able to dig for more abstract sounds and things to play live, mixing electronics and acoustics. The music's half of me, but the other half -- I landed probably the best gig of all. I work for the Jet Propulsion Lab. I'm building the next Mars Rover. Some of the most brilliant engineers I know are the ones who have that sort of artistic quality about them. You've got to do what you want to do. And anyone who tells you you can't, you don't listen to them. Maybe they're right - I doubt it. Tell them where to put it, and then just do what you want to do. I'm Morgan Hendry. I am NASA.
ビアウェア・オブ・セイフティ は ロックバンドの名前です 比較的実験的な音楽を探究しています 即興的なジャズがあったり 力強いロックのサウンドもあります 音を楽器として扱い 電子機器とアコースティックを 混ぜて より抽象的なサウンドや ライブ演奏をします 音楽は私の半面です もう一方では 素晴らしい仕事に就けました 私はジェット推進研究所で働き 火星ローバーを開発しています 私が知る最も優秀な技術者達は 芸術の才能も長けています 人は したいことをすべきです おまえは無理と言う人など聞く必要ない 彼らは正しいかもしれないが 疑わしいのさ とにかく やりたいことをすればいい 私はモーガン・ヘンドリー 私はNASAです
Charles Elachi: Now, moving from the play stuff to the serious stuff, always people ask, why do we explore? Why are we doing all of these missions and why are we exploring them? Well, the way I think about it is fairly simple. Somehow, 13 billion years ago there was a Big Bang, and you've heard a little bit about, you know, the origin of the universe. But somehow what strikes everybody's imagination -- or lots of people's imagination -- somehow from that original Big Bang we have this beautiful world that we live in today.
それでは余興から本題に移りましょう どうして探索するのか といつも聞かれます ミッションを計画し探索する理由は何でしょう? 私の考えは とてもシンプルです ご存じのとおり 130億年前に 宇宙の起源であるビッグバンが起きました 非常に興味深いのは そのビッグバン以来 どういった経緯か 今日私たちが住む 世界は非常に素晴らしい
You look outside: you have all that beauty that you see, all that life that you see around you, and here we have intelligent people like you and I who are having a conversation here. All that started from that Big Bang. So, the question is: How did that happen? How did that evolve? How did the universe form? How did the galaxies form? How did the planets form? Why is there a planet on which there is life which have evolved? Is that very common? Is there life on every planet that you can see around the stars? So we literally are all made out of stardust. We started from those stars; we are made of stardust. So, next time you are really depressed, look in the mirror and you can look and say, hi, I'm looking at a star here. You can skip the dust part. But literally, we are all made of stardust.
外には美しい景色が広がってますし 生命に満ちあふれています そして皆さんのような人間がいて ここで知的な会話をしている 全てはビッグバンから始まった そこで疑問は どのように起きたのか? どのように進化したのか? どのように宇宙が形成されたのか? どのように銀河ができたのか? どのように惑星ができたのか? どうして生命を育む惑星ができたのか? それは普通なことなのか? 恒星を回る全ての惑星に生命は存在するのか? 文字通り私たちは星くずでできているのです 私たちの原点は星です 私たちは星くずなのです ですから次に落ち込んだ時は鏡を覗いて こう言えばいいのです 「今見ているのは星なんだ」 「くず」は省いて構いません 文字通り 私たちは星くずで出来ています
So, what we are trying to do in our exploration is effectively write the book of how things have came about as they are today. And one of the first, or the easiest, places we can go and explore that is to go towards Mars. And the reason Mars takes particular attention: it's not very far from us. You know, it'll take us only six months to get there. Six to nine months at the right time of the year. It's a planet somewhat similar to Earth. It's a little bit smaller, but the land mass on Mars is about the same as the land mass on Earth, you know, if you don't take the oceans into account. It has polar caps. It has an atmosphere somewhat thinner than ours, so it has weather. So, it's very similar to some extent, and you can see some of the features on it, like the Grand Canyon on Mars, or what we call the Grand Canyon on Mars. It is like the Grand Canyon on Earth, except a hell of a lot larger.
ですから私たちの探索は 今日存在するものが どのように出来たか本を書くようなものです そして私たちが探索するのに最も身近な 惑星が火星なのです 火星が特に興味深い理由のひとつは 遠くないことです わずか6ヶ月で到達できます 時期により6〜9ヶ月です 火星は地球より 少し小さいですがよく似ています 海を除いた 火星の陸地面積は だいたい地球と同じです 極冠があり 地球よりも若干薄い大気が存在し 気象があります ある程度までとても似ています 火星の地形がご覧になります 火星のグランド・キャニオンとも 言える渓谷があります 火星のグランド・キャニオンとも 言える渓谷があります 地球のグランド・キャニオンに 似ていますがとても巨大です
So it's about the size, you know, of the United States. It has volcanoes on it. And that's Mount Olympus on Mars, which is a kind of huge volcanic shield on that planet. And if you look at the height of it and you compare it to Mount Everest, you see, it'll give you an idea of how large that Mount Olympus, you know, is, relative to Mount Everest. So, it basically dwarfs, you know, Mount Everest here on Earth. So, that gives you an idea of the tectonic events or volcanic events which have happened on that planet. Recently from one of our satellites, this shows that it's Earth-like -- we caught a landslide occurring as it was happening. So it is a dynamic planet, and activity is going on as we speak today.
アメリカ合衆国と同じくらいの大きさです 火山が存在し その一つオリンパス山は いわば巨大な盾状の火山です その標高を見ると エベレストと比較すれば オリンパス山がいかに巨大であるかお分かりでしょう オリンパス山がいかに巨大であるかお分かりでしょう エベレストが隠れる位です 火星の地殻変動や火山活動の 規模を把握できます 火星の地殻変動や火山活動の 規模を把握できます 最近 人工衛星が地球上に似た 地滑りが発生する様子を観測しました 活動的な惑星なのです 活動は今も継続しています
And these Rovers, people wonder now, what are they doing today, so I thought I would show you a little bit what they are doing. This is one very large crater. Geologists love craters, because craters are like digging a big hole in the ground without really working at it, and you can see what's below the surface. So, this is called Victoria Crater, which is about a few football fields in size. And if you look at the top left, you see a little teeny dark dot. This picture was taken from an orbiting satellite. If I zoom on it, you can see: that's the Rover on the surface. So, that was taken from orbit; we had the camera zoom on the surface, and we actually saw the Rover on the surface. And we actually used the combination of the satellite images and the Rover to actually conduct science, because we can observe large areas and then you can get those Rovers to move around and basically go to a certain location.
ローバーは今何をしているか知りたいですよね? そこで皆さんに現在の様子をご覧に入れましょう 巨大なクレーターです 地質学者はクレーターが大好きです 何の苦労もなく地面に大きな 穴を掘ったようなもので 地表の下が見えるからです これはヴィクトリア・クレーターと呼ばれています サッカー場が数面分の大きさです 左上に小さな暗い点が見えます この写真は軌道上の衛星から撮影しました 拡大するとそれが地上のローバーなのです 軌道上から撮影して地上を拡大すると 実際にローバーを見ることが出来ました 衛星からの映像とローバーの両方を 使って調査を行いました まず広域を観測し ローバーに指示して 任意の場所に移動させます
So, specifically what we are doing now is that Rover is going down in that crater. As I told you, geologists love craters. And the reason is, many of you went to the Grand Canyon, and you see in the wall of the Grand Canyon, you see these layers. And what these layers -- that's what the surface used to be a million years ago, 10 million years ago, 100 million years ago, and you get deposits on top of them. So if you can read the layers it's like reading your book, and you can learn the history of what happened in the past in that location.
具体的にはローバーを クレーターに降下させています 地質学者はクレーターが大好きです グランド・キャニオンに行った方は多いでしょうが グランド・キャニオンの壁には地層が見えます 地層というのは百万年 一千万年 一億万年前に地表であった部分であり そこには当時の堆積物があります 地層を解読すれば歴史書を読むようなものです その場所で過去にどのような事が起きたのか 学ぶことが出来るのです
So what you are seeing here are the layers on the wall of that crater, and the Rover is going down now, measuring, you know, the properties and analyzing the rocks as it's going down, you know, that canyon. Now, it's kind of a little bit of a challenge driving down a slope like this. If you were there you wouldn't do it yourself. But we really made sure we tested those Rovers before we got them down -- or that Rover -- and made sure that it's all working well.
これはクレーター壁面であり ローバーはそこを降りながら 地層の特性を 調査したり岩石を分析したりするのです このような坂を下るのは 困難なことです 普通そんなことはしないでしょう しかし私たちはローバーが 降下を始める前に全ての機能が 万全であることを確認しました
Now, when I came last time, shortly after the landing -- I think it was, like, a hundred days after the landing -- I told you I was surprised that those Rovers are lasting even a hundred days. Well, here we are four years later, and they're still working. Now you say, Charles, you are really lying to us, and so on, but that's not true. We really believed they were going to last 90 days or 100 days, because they are solar powered, and Mars is a dusty planet, so we expected the dust would start accumulating on the surface, and after a while we wouldn't have enough power, you know, to keep them warm.
前回 着陸後まもなく ここに来た時は たしか着陸後100日ほどでしたが みなさんにローバーが100日も 稼働したことは驚きだと申し上げました そして4年経ちましたが今でも動いています 眉唾だと言われるでしょう でも違います 私たちは90〜100日程度しか 持たないと考えていました 太陽光発電が動力で 火星のような埃の多い惑星では 表面に埃が積もり ローバーの作動に必要な 電力を充分に得られないと思っていたのです
Well, I always say it's important that you are smart, but every once in a while it's good to be lucky. And that's what we found out. It turned out that every once in a while there are dust devils which come by on Mars, as you are seeing here, and when the dust devil comes over the Rover, it just cleans it up. It is like a brand new car that you have, and that's literally why they have lasted so long. And now we designed them reasonably well, but that's exactly why they are lasting that long and still providing all the science data. Now, the two Rovers, each one of them is, kind of, getting old. You know, one of them, one of the wheels is stuck, is not working, one of the front wheels, so what we are doing, we are driving it backwards. And the other one has arthritis of the shoulder joint, you know, it's not working very well, so it's walking like this, and we can move the arm, you know, that way. But still they are producing a lot of scientific data. Now, during that whole period, a number of people got excited, you know, outside the science community about these Rovers, so I thought I'd show you a video just to give you a reflection about how these Rovers are being viewed by people other than the science community.
賢いことは大切ですが 時にはツキも味方します まさにツキがありました 火星では時折 ご覧のようなつむじ風が発生して ローバーの埃を吹き飛ばしてくれるのです まるで新車のような状態になり 長期間に渡り作動しているのです もちろん それなりの設計をしました つむじ風こそ 長い間機能していまだに 科学的データを提供できる理由なのです それでも 2台のローバーは古くなりつつあります 一台の車輪が動かなくなっています 前輪の一つです そこで バックで運転しています 別の一台は結合部の故障のため アームがうまく動かないので 騙しながら動かしています それでも大量の科学的データを提供しています これまでの間 多くの科学界以外の人も これらのローバーに大いに興奮しました そこで科学界以外の人々が ローバーをどのように受け止めたか ビデオでご紹介します
So let me go on the next short video. By the way, this video is pretty accurate of how the landing took place, you know, about four years ago. Video: Okay, we have parachute aligned. Okay, deploy the airbags. Open. Camera. We have a picture right now. Yeah! CE: That's about what happened in the Houston operation room. It's exactly like this. Video: Now, if there is life, the Dutch will find it. What is he doing? What is that? CE: Not too bad.
どうぞ ご覧ください ところで このビデオは4年前の着陸時の 様子をとても正確に表現しています ところでこのビデオは4年前の着陸時の 様子をとても正確に表現しています パラシュートがそろって開いた エアバッグ展開 開け カメラ 映像が到着しました やった! ヒューストンのオペレーション・ルームの様子です 全くこの通りでした 火星人を探すのはオランダ人に任せよう 何やってるんだ? なんだこれは? 悪くないでしょう?
So anyway, let me continue on showing you a little bit about the beauty of that planet. As I said earlier, it looked very much like Earth, so you see sand dunes. It looks like I could have told you these are pictures taken from the Sahara Desert or somewhere, and you'd have believed me, but these are pictures taken from Mars. But one area which is particularly intriguing for us is the northern region, you know, of Mars, close to the North Pole, because we see ice caps, and we see the ice caps shrinking and expanding, so it's very much like you have in northern Canada. And we wanted to find out -- and we see all kinds of glacial features on it. So, we wanted to find out, actually, what is that ice made of, and could that have embedded in it some organic, you know, material.
それでは火星の美しさについて もう少し紹介しましょう 述べた通り とても地球に似ています 砂丘がご覧になれます サハラ砂漠かどこかだと 言ったとしても 皆さん信じることでしょう しかしこれは火星の写真なのです 特に興味深い地域と言えば 火星の北部 北極点に近い所です まるでカナダ北部にあるような 極冠氷があり 拡大したり縮小したりします 氷河の特徴的地形が観測できます 実際私たちはその氷が 何で出来ていているのか 有機物が含まれているか 調査しようとしました
So we have a spacecraft which is heading towards Mars, called Phoenix, and that spacecraft will land 17 days, seven hours and 20 seconds from now, so you can adjust your watch. So it's on May 25 around just before five o'clock our time here on the West Coast, actually we will be landing on another planet. And as you can see, this is a picture of the spacecraft put on Mars, but I thought that just in case you're going to miss that show, you know, in 17 days, I'll show you, kind of, a little bit of what's going to happen.
フェニックスと呼ぶ宇宙船が 火星に向かっており 今からちょうど 17日と7時間20秒で着陸する予定です 時計をセットしておいて下さい だいたい西海岸時間で5月25日5時前に 別の惑星に着陸します これは火星に降り立った宇宙船の想像図ですが 17日後の着陸ショーを ご覧になれない方のために その様子を ご覧に入れます
Video: That's what we call the seven minutes of terror. So the plan is to dig in the soil and take samples that we put them in an oven and actually heat them and look what gases will come from it. So this was launched about nine months ago. We'll be coming in at 12,000 miles per hour, and in seven minutes we have to stop and touch the surface very softly so we don't break that lander.
ご紹介するのは「恐怖の7分間」です 計画では地表を掘ってサンプルを採集し オーブンに入れて加熱します そして噴出するガスを測定するのです 約9ヶ月前に打ち上げられました 時速約2万キロで突入し7分後に 着陸船を破損することなく 地表に軟着陸させるのです
Ben Cichy: Phoenix is the first Mars Scout mission. It's the first mission that's going to try to land near the North Pole of Mars, and it's the first mission that's actually going to try and reach out and touch water on the surface of another planet.
フェニックスは初の火星偵察計画です 初めて火星の北極近くに着陸し これも初めて地球以外の 惑星に存在する水に触れる計画です 惑星に存在する水に触れる計画です
Lynn Craig: Where there tends to be water, at least on Earth, there tends to be life, and so it's potentially a place where life could have existed on the planet in the past.
少なくとも地球では水がある所に 生命が存在する傾向があるので 火星でも 過去に生命が存在した可能性があるのは水中です
Erik Bailey: The main purpose of EDL is to take a spacecraft that is traveling at 12,500 miles an hour and bring it to a screeching halt in a soft way in a very short amount of time. BC: We enter the Martian atmosphere. We're 70 miles above the surface of Mars. And our lander is safely tucked inside what we call an aeroshell.
大気圏突入から軟着陸では時速2万キロで 飛ぶ宇宙船を非常に短時間で減速し 優しく停止させることが求められます 飛ぶ宇宙船を非常に短時間で減速し 優しく停止させることが求められます 火星の大気圏に突入します 火星の地表から112キロの高度です 着陸船はエアロシェルと呼ぶ中に格納されています
EB: Looks kind of like an ice cream cone, more or less.
アイスクリームのコーンのような形です
BC: And on the front of it is this heat shield, this saucer-looking thing that has about a half-inch of essentially what's cork on the front of it, which is our heat shield. Now, this is really special cork, and this cork is what's going to protect us from the violent atmospheric entry that we're about to experience.
前部の皿に見える部分には 耐熱処理が施され厚さ1センチほどの 耐熱効果を持つコルクに覆われています 耐熱効果を持つコルクに覆われています この非常に特殊なコルクは 大気圏突入時の過酷な 衝撃から宇宙船を守るのです
Rob Grover: Friction really starts to build up on the spacecraft, and we use the friction when it's flying through the atmosphere to our advantage to slow us down. BC: From this point, we're going to decelerate from 12,500 miles an hour down to 900 miles an hour.
大気を宇宙船が通過する際 摩擦が発生するのでそれを利用して 速度を落とします ここから時速2万キロを 時速1500キロまで減速します
EB: The outside can get almost as hot as the surface of the Sun.
外部は太陽の表面と同じ位熱くなります
RG: The temperature of the heat shield can reach 2,600 degrees Fahrenheit.
耐熱部分の温度は1400℃になります
EB: The inside doesn't get very hot. It probably gets about room temperature. Richard Kornfeld: There is this window of opportunity within which we can deploy the parachute.
内部は熱くなりません おそらく室温と同程度でしょう パラシュートを展開するタイミングがきました パラシュートを展開するタイミングがきました
EB: If you fire the 'chute too early, the parachute itself could fail. The fabric and the stitching could just pull apart. And that would be bad.
早過ぎるとパラシュートは機能しません 生地と縫い目が破れてしまいます それはダメです
BC: In the first 15 seconds after we deploy the parachute, we'll decelerate from 900 miles an hour to a relatively slow 250 miles an hour. We no longer need the heat shield to protect us from the force of atmospheric entry, so we jettison the heat shield, exposing for the first time our lander to the atmosphere of Mars.
パラシュートが開いて15秒後に 時速1500キロから時速400キロという 比較的遅い速度まで減速します 大気圏突入の際に機体を守った 耐熱シールドは もう必要ないので切り離します 大気圏突入の際に機体を守った 耐熱シールドは もう必要ないので切り離します そこで初めて着陸船が火星の大気に触れます
LC: After the heat shield has been jettisoned and the legs are deployed, the next step is to have the radar system begin to detect how far Phoenix really is from the ground.
耐熱シールドを切り離し脚が展開されると 次にレーダーシステムがフェニックスの 地表からの高度を計測し始めます 次にレーダーシステムがフェニックスの 地表からの高度を計測し始めます
BC: We've lost 99 percent of our entry velocity. So, we're 99 percent of the way to where we want to be. But that last one percent, as it always seems to be, is the tricky part.
大気圏突入時点から99%減速しています 着陸まで99%の行程が終わったのです しかしこの場合でも 残り1%が非常に難しいのです
EB: Now the spacecraft actually has to decide when it's going to get rid of its parachute.
ここで宇宙船は いつパラシュートを 切り離すか決定します
BC: We separate from the lander going 125 miles an hour at roughly a kilometer above the surface of Mars: 3,200 feet. That's like taking two Empire State Buildings and stacking them on top of one another.
時速200キロで落下する宇宙船を 火星の地表から1キロ上空で切り離します ちょうどエンパイア・ステートビルを 二つ縦に重ねた位です ちょうどエンパイア・ステートビルを 二つ縦に重ねた位です
EB: That's when we separate from the back shell, and we're now in free-fall. It's a very scary moment; a lot has to happen in a very short amount of time. LC: So it's in a free-fall, but it's also trying to use all of its actuators to make sure that it's in the right position to land.
その時点で後部シェルから切り離し 宇宙船は自由落下に入ります まさに恐怖の瞬間です とても多くのことが瞬時に起きます まさに恐怖の瞬間です とても多くのことが瞬時に起きます 宇宙船は自由落下しながら 全ての機器を使って着陸するのに 適正な姿勢を保ちます 全ての機器を使って着陸するのに 適正な姿勢を保ちます
EB: And then it has to light up its engines, right itself, and then slowly slow itself down and touch down on the ground safely.
そしてエンジンを点火し 姿勢を正し ゆっくりとスピードを緩めながら 安全に着陸するのです
BC: Earth and Mars are so far apart that it takes over ten minutes for a signal from Mars to get to Earth. And EDL itself is all over in a matter of seven minutes. So by the time you even hear from the lander that EDL has started it'll already be over.
地球と火星は信号が届くのに 10分以上かかるほど離れています この一連の操作は7分ほどの出来事です ですから大気圏突入を始めた信号を 受信した時には全てが終わっています ですから大気圏突入を始めた信号を 受信した時には全てが終わっています
EB: We have to build large amounts of autonomy into the spacecraft so that it can land itself safely.
安全に着陸するために 宇宙船に高度な自律性を 持たせる必要があります
BC: EDL is this immense, technically challenging problem. It's about getting a spacecraft that's hurtling through deep space and using all this bag of tricks to somehow figure out how to get it down to the surface of Mars at zero miles an hour. It's this immensely exciting and challenging problem.
火星軟着陸は技術的に非常に困難です 宇宙空間を飛んできた宇宙船を 考え得る全ての技術を用いて 火星の地表に着陸させるのですから 刺激的で挑戦のしがいがあります
CE: Hopefully it all will happen the way you saw it in here. So it will be a very tense moment, you know, as we are watching that spacecraft landing on another planet.
ご覧頂いたように事が運べばいいのですが 宇宙船が別の惑星に 着陸する瞬間は とても緊張するでしょう
So now let me talk about the next things that we are doing. So we are in the process, as we speak, of actually designing the next Rover that we are going to be sending to Mars. So I thought I would go a little bit and tell you, kind of, the steps we go through. It's very similar to what you do when you design your product. As you saw a little bit earlier, when we were doing the Phoenix one, we have to take into account the heat that we are going to be facing. So we have to study all kinds of different materials, the shape that we want to do. In general we don't try to please the customer here. What we want to do is to make sure we have an effective, you know, an efficient kind of machine.
では私たちの次の計画についてご紹介します 現在私たちは次に火星に送り込むローバーの 設計を進めています 設計段階の状況を 少しご紹介しましょう 皆さんの製品企画にも共通することです ご覧頂いたように フェニックス計画では 直面する熱の対策をする必要がありました 考え得る全ての素材や形状を研究しました 考え得る全ての素材や形状を研究しました 顧客を満足させようとする訳ではありません 実用的かつ効率的な機器を確実に制作しようと 思っているのです
First we start by we want to have our employees to be as imaginative as they can. And we really love being close to the art center, because we have, as a matter of fact, one of the alumni from the art center, Eric Nyquist, had put a series of displays, far-out displays, you know, in our what we call mission design or spacecraft design room, just to get people to think wildly about things. We have a bunch of Legos. So, as I said, this is a playground for adults, where they sit down and try to play with different shapes and different designs.
はじめに従業員にはできる限り 創造性を発揮してもらおうとしました アートセンターに近いのが非常に好ましいです 実際にアートセンター卒業生の エリック・ニキストは私たちの ミッション 宇宙船設計室に 素晴らしい作品を展示して 私たちに様々な発想を促しました 山ほどのレゴもあります まさに大人の遊び場です 座り込んでは様々な形状やデザインを考えています
Then we get a little bit more serious, so we have what we call our CAD/CAMs and all the engineers who are involved, or scientists who are involved, who know about thermal properties, know about design, know about atmospheric interaction, parachutes, all of these things, which they work in a team effort and actually design a spacecraft in a computer to some extent, so to see, does that meet the requirement that we need. On the right, also, we have to take into account the environment of the planet where we are going. If you are going to Jupiter, you have a very high-radiation, you know, environment. It's about the same radiation environment close by Jupiter as inside a nuclear reactor.
そして段々と より真剣になっていきます CAD/CAM技師 技術者 科学者が参画して 熱の性質 設計 大気の特性 パラシュートについて チームで詳細な検討を検討し コンピューターで ある程度まで 私たちの要求する仕様に適合する 宇宙船を設計します 一方 目指している惑星の 環境も考慮する必要があります 木星に行くとすれば そこは非常に放射線の強い 環境です 木星近辺の 放射線量は原子炉の内部と同程度です
So just imagine: you take your P.C. and throw it into a nuclear reactor and it still has to work. So these are kind of some of the little challenges, you know, that we have to face. If we are doing entry, we have to do tests of parachutes. You saw in the video a parachute breaking. That would be a bad day, you know, if that happened, so we have to test, because we are deploying this parachute at supersonic speeds. We are coming at extremely high speeds, and we are deploying them to slow us down. So we have to do all kinds of tests. To give you an idea of the size, you know, of that parachute relative to the people standing there.
皆さんのパソコンを原子炉に放り込んでも正常に 稼働しないといけない様なものです こういった様々な大小の問題に 私たちは直面しているのです 大気圏突入に備えてパラシュート試験もします ビデオでパラシュートが 破壊するシーンがありました 実際に起きたら最悪ですから試験します このパラシュートは超音速で展開します 超高速な状態から展開して減速する 従って有りとあらゆる試験ををします パラシュートを立っている人と比較すると その大きさが分かると思います
Next step, we go and actually build some kind of test models and actually test them, you know, in the lab at JPL, in what we call our Mars Yard. We kick them, we hit them, we drop them, just to make sure we understand how, where would they break. And then we back off, you know, from that point. And then we actually do the actual building and the flight. And this next Rover that we're flying is about the size of a car. That big shield that you see outside, that's a heat shield which is going to protect it. And that will be basically built over the next year, and it will be launched June a year from now. Now, in that case, because it was a very big Rover, we couldn't use airbags. And I know many of you, kind of, last time afterwards said well, that was a cool thing to have -- those airbags. Unfortunately this Rover is, like, ten times the size of the, you know, mass-wise, of the other Rover, or three times the mass. So we can't use airbags. So we have to come up with another ingenious idea of how do we land it. And we didn't want to take it propulsively all the way to the surface because we didn't want to contaminate the surface; we wanted the Rover to immediately land on its legs.
次に実験機を制作しそれを JPLの火星ヤードと呼ぶ実験場所に 運び込んで試験をします 蹴ったり叩いたり落としたりして どこがどう壊れるか検証して確認します そして懸念点を修正するのです そして実際に本番機を制作し飛行させます 次に飛ばすローバーは乗用車位の大きさです 外側の大きなシールドが ローバーを熱から守ります 来年にかけて制作し 1年後の6月に発射する予定です とても大きなローバーなので エアバッグを使えませんでした 前回多くの人がエアバッグは とても名案だったと言ってくれました 残念なことに今回のローバーは前のローバーの 大きさは10倍 重さは3倍あります そのためエアバッグは使えません 何か他の巧妙な着陸手段が必要です 地表を汚染しないためにも 送り込む物質を減らそうとしました ローバーの脚部で直に着陸させたかったのです
So we came up with this ingenious idea, which is used here on Earth for helicopters. Actually, the lander will come down to about 100 feet and hover above that surface for 100 feet, and then we have a sky crane which will take that Rover and land it down on the surface. Hopefully it all will work, you know, it will work that way. And that Rover will be more kind of like a chemist. What we are going to be doing with that Rover as it drives around, it's going to go and analyze the chemical composition of rocks. So it will have an arm which will take samples, put them in an oven, crush and analyze them. But also, if there is something that we cannot reach because it is too high on a cliff, we have a little laser system which will actually zap the rock, evaporate some of it, and actually analyze what's coming from that rock. So it's a little bit like "Star Wars," you know, but it's real. It's real stuff. And also to help you, to help the community so you can do ads on that Rover, we are going to train that Rover to actually in addition to do this, to actually serve cocktails, you know, also on Mars.
そこで地球でもヘリコプターで使っている アイディアを用いることにしました 実際着陸船は地表30メートルほどで 一旦停止し そしてスカイクレーンを使って ローバーを地表に降ろします 思惑通りにいくことを祈っています 今回のローバーは化学者のようものです ローバーを走行させてすることは 岩石の化学物質の構成の解析です ローバーにはアームがありサンプルを採取して オーブンに入れ砕き解析します 高くて届かない所にある検体を 採取するにはレーザーシステムを展開して 岩石に投射し気化した成分を 吸入し岩石の成分を解析します まるでスターウォーズのようですが本物です 現実のものです そして私たちの一助になるよう ローバーに広告を掲載し ローバーを訓練して 火星でカクテルを サーブできるようにします 火星でカクテルを サーブできるようにします
So that's kind of giving you an idea of the kind of, you know, fun things we are doing on Mars. I thought I'd go to "The Lord of the Rings" now and show you some of the things we have there. Now, "The Lord of the Rings" has two things played through it. One, it's a very attractive planet -- it just has the beauty of the rings and so on. But for scientists, also the rings have a special meaning, because we believe they represent, on a small scale, how the Solar System actually formed. Some of the scientists believe that the way the Solar System formed, that the Sun when it collapsed and actually created the Sun, a lot of the dust around it created rings and then the particles in those rings accumulated together, and they formed bigger rocks, and then that's how the planets, you know, were formed.
火星でしている楽しいことを お分かり頂けたかと思います 火星でしている楽しいことを お分かり頂けたかと思います 次に土星に行ってみましょう いくつか分かっていることをご紹介します 土星には二つとても興味深い点があります まずとても魅力的な惑星であること とても美しいリングをもっています 科学者にとっても このリングは特別なんです リングは太陽系が どのように形成されたか 小規模で示していると考えています 一部の科学者は太陽系が形成されて 太陽が凝縮して生まれた際に 塵が周囲にリングを形成し リングの粒子が お互いに堆積しながら 次第に大きな岩石になり やがて 惑星が形成されたと考えています 次第に大きな岩石になり やがて 惑星が形成されたと考えています
So, the idea is, by watching Saturn we're actually watching our solar system in real time being formed on a smaller scale, so it's like a test bed for it. So, let me show you a little bit on what that Saturnian system looks like. First, I'm going to fly you over the rings. By the way, all of this is real stuff. This is not animation or anything like this. This is actually taken from the satellite that we have in orbit around Saturn, the Cassini. And you see the amount of detail that is in those rings, which are the particles. Some of them are agglomerating together to form larger particles. So that's why you have these gaps, is because a small satellite, you know, is being formed in that location. Now, you think that those rings are very large objects. Yes, they are very large in one dimension; in the other dimension they are paper thin. Very, very thin. What you are seeing here is the shadow of the ring on Saturn itself. And that's one of the satellites which was actually formed on that one. So, think about it as a paper-thin, huge area of many hundreds of thousands of miles, which is rotating.
つまり土星を観測することでリアルタイムに 小規模な太陽系の誕生を把握できます いわばテスト環境です では土星系システムを 少しご紹介しましょう まずリングの上にお連れします もちろん これらは実写です アニメーション等ではありません カッシーニという土星を 周回する衛星から撮影しました リングを構成する粒子の詳細が見えます リングを構成する粒子の詳細が見えます 粒子はお互いに衝突して より大きくなります その結果小さな衛星が形成されると そこに溝ができるのです リングは とても大きな物体だと思うでしょう ええ 直径は非常に大きいです しかし厚さは とてもとても薄いのです これはリングが土星に影を作っているところです そこで形成された衛星の一つが見えます そこで形成された衛星の一つが見えます とても薄い 巨大なリングが回転しているのです
And we have a wide variety of kind of satellites which will form, each one looking very different and very odd, and that keeps scientists busy for tens of years trying to explain this, and telling NASA we need more money so we can explain what these things look like, or why they formed that way. Well, there were two satellites which were particularly interesting. One of them is called Enceladus. It's a satellite which was all made of ice, and we measured it from orbit. Made of ice. But there was something bizarre about it. If you look at these stripes in here, what we call tiger stripes, when we flew over them, all of a sudden we saw an increase in the temperature, which said that those stripes are warmer than the rest of the planet.
様々な種類の衛星が将来形成され ひとつひとつが とても個性豊かなので 科学者達は何十年もかけて研究しています これら物体の形状や生い立ちを理解するには より多くの予算が必要だとNASAに求めています 特に興味深い二つの衛星があります ひとつはエンケラドスです 全て氷の衛星です 衛星の軌道から計測しました しかもとても奇妙なことがあるのです 虎縞のように見える地域の 上空を通過する際に計測すると 惑星の他の部分に比べ 温度が突然上昇するのです
So as we flew by away from it, we looked back. And guess what? We saw geysers coming out. So this is a Yellowstone, you know, of Saturn. We are seeing geysers of ice which are coming out of that planet, which indicate that most likely there is an ocean, you know, below the surface. And somehow, through some dynamic effect, we're having these geysers which are being, you know, emitted from it. And the reason I showed the little arrow there, I think that should say 30 miles, we decided a few months ago to actually fly the spacecraft through the plume of that geyser so we can actually measure the material that it is made of. That was [unclear] also -- you know, because we were worried about the risk of it, but it worked pretty well. We flew at the top of it, and we found that there is a fair amount of organic material which is being emitted in combination with the ice. And over the next few years, as we keep orbiting, you know, Saturn, we are planning to get closer and closer down to the surface and make more accurate measurements.
通過した後に振り返ると 間欠泉が吹き出ているのを 発見しました まさに土星のイエローストーンです 氷の間欠泉が噴出していることで 内部に海があるのが推測できます 内部に海があるのが推測できます 運よく大きな動きをする間欠泉が 放出される瞬間を捉えられました この小さい矢印は約50キロを 指していますが 数か月前に間欠泉の噴煙の中に 宇宙船を通過させることにしました 噴煙の構成物を解明するためです 当然リスクのある試みでしたが うまくいきました 噴煙の頂点部を通過しましたが 氷と共に有機物が噴出するのを観測できました そして土星を何年か周回するうち 表面に近づきながら より正確な観測をする 計画です
Now, another satellite also attracted a lot of attention, and that's Titan. And the reason Titan is particularly interesting, it's a satellite bigger than our moon, and it has an atmosphere. And that atmosphere is very -- as dense as our own atmosphere. So if you were on Titan, you would feel the same pressure that you feel in here. Except it's a lot colder, and that atmosphere is heavily made of methane. Now, methane gets people all excited, because it's organic material, so immediately people start thinking, could life have evolved in that location, when you have a lot of organic material. So people believe now that Titan is most likely what we call a pre-biotic planet, because it's so cold organic material did not get to the stage of becoming biological material, and therefore life could have evolved on it.
タイタンも大きな注目を集めています タイタンが興味深い理由は タイタンが月よりも大きく大気があるからです 私たちの大気と同じ位濃い密度なのです ですからタイタンでは地球上と同じ位の 大気圧を感じるのです ただし とても寒く 大気はメタンでできています メタンが注目を浴びたのは有機物だからです そのため多くの人は 有機物が大量に存在すれば 生命が進化した可能性を考えました 今ではタイタンは前生物的な惑星と呼ばれています あまりの寒さのため 有機物が生命の誕生と進化に 必要な生命の素材に 発展しなかったと考えられます
So it could be Earth, frozen three billion years ago before life actually started on it. So that's getting a lot of interest, and to show you some example of what we did in there, we actually dropped a probe, which was developed by our colleagues in Europe, we dropped a probe as we were orbiting Saturn. We dropped a probe in the atmosphere of Titan. And this is a picture of an area as we were coming down. Just looked like the coast of California for me. You see the rivers which are coming along the coast, and you see that white area which looks like Catalina Island, and that looks like an ocean. And then with an instrument we have on board, a radar instrument, we found there are lakes like the Great Lakes in here, so it looks very much like Earth. It looks like there are rivers on it, there are oceans or lakes, we know there are clouds. We think it's raining also on it. So it's very much like the cycle on Earth except because it's so cold, it could not be water, you know, because water would have frozen. What it turned out, that all that we are seeing, all this liquid, [is made of] hydrocarbon and ethane and methane, similar to what you put in your car.
そのためタイタンは生命が生まれる前に冷凍した 30億年前の地球と見られます 興味を引く話題なので私たちが 実行したことを話します 欧州の同僚が開発した 探査機を土星の軌道上から落下しました 探査機を土星の軌道上から落下しました タイタンの大気に突入させたのです 降下中に撮影した地形の写真です 私にはカリフォルニアの海岸に見えます 海岸沿いに川も見えます 白い部分は まるでカタリナ島みたいです あれは海のようですね そして搭載しているレーダー機器で 五大湖に似た湖も見つけました 本当に地球に似ているのです 川や海や湖があり 雲が発生して 雨も降ると考えられます 地球における水循環にとても似ていますが 水ではありません 寒すぎて 水は凍ってしまうからです このような液体は実は 炭化水素 エタン メタンです 私たちの車の燃料に似ています
So here we have a cycle of a planet which is like our Earth, but is all made of ethane and methane and organic material. So if you were on Mars -- sorry, on Titan, you don't have to worry about four-dollar gasoline. You just drive to the nearest lake, stick your hose in it, and you've got your car filled up. On the other hand, if you light a match the whole planet will blow up. So in closing, I said I want to close by a couple of pictures. And just to kind of put us in perspective, this is a picture of Saturn taken with a spacecraft from behind Saturn, looking towards the Sun. The Sun is behind Saturn, so we see what we call "forward scattering," so it highlights all the rings. And I'm going to zoom. There is a -- I'm not sure you can see it very well, but on the top left, around 10 o'clock, there is a little teeny dot, and that's Earth. You barely can see ourselves. So what I did, I thought I'd zoom on it. So as you zoom in, you know, you can see Earth, you know, just in the middle here. So we zoomed all the way on the art center.
地球に似た液体循環がありますが エタン メタン等 有機物の惑星です ですからタイタンでは ガソリンの価格を心配する必要はないのです 近くの湖まで行ってホースを入れ 車を満タンにすればいいのです ただしマッチを擦って火を起こすと 惑星ごと爆発してしまうでしょう 最後に数枚の写真をご紹介します 宇宙の概念が少し分かることでしょう これは土星の裏側から太陽の方向を 向いて撮影した写真です 土星の裏側に太陽があるので 「前方散乱」を観測できます 全ての土星の輪がはっきり見えます ズームアップしてみます はっきり見えないでしょうが 左上10時くらいの方角にある 小さな点が地球です ほとんど見えませんね そこで ズームアップすると地球が見えてきます アートセンターが見えるまでズームします
So thank you very much.
ご清聴有難うございました