美国有线新闻 CNN NASA计划四个太空探索新项目（在线收听）

NASA, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, has four ideas it's looking at as possible future missions.

美国国家航空航天局（简称NASA）正在研究涉及未来可能任务的四个设想。

Two of them would focus on Venus. One of them would explore Jupiter's moon Io and one of them would fly by Neptune's moon Triton. I keep saying would because these are just ideas at this point. They'll each be researched by a team over a period of nine months and when the final proposals are made NASA will then decide whether to turn them into actual missions.

其中两个任务会聚焦金星。一个探索木星的卫星“艾奥”，最后一个任务则要飞往海星的卫星海卫一。我一直用“可能会”这个词，是因为这些目前还只是想法。每项任务都将由一个小组进行九个月的研究，最终方案确定后，NASA将决定是否将其转化为实际任务。

So what would scientists hope to learn from all this? As far as Venus goes, one thing they're interested in is its atmosphere which is toxic another is the planet's surface which is hot enough to melt lead. Venus' scorching rocky landscape could be mapped.

那科学家希望从这一切中学到什么？就金星来说，他们感兴趣的其中一件事是其有毒的大气层，另一件事是这颗行星温度高到足以熔化铅的表面。金星灼热的岩石风貌可以被绘制出来。

Jupiter's moon Io is believed to be the most volcanically active place in our solar system so NASA would like to find out more about the eruptions that happen there. And Triton, a moon that orbits Neptune could also be mapped and studied to see if there are signs of an ocean beneath the moon's surface.

木星卫星“艾奥”被认为是我们太阳系中火山活动最活跃的天体，因此NASA想进一步了解那里发生的火山爆发。海卫一是围绕海王星运行的卫星，其也可以被绘制出来并加以研究，以确定月球表面下是否有海洋存在的迹象。

None of these missions would involve astronauts. Robotic spacecraft would be doing the traveling and of course all of them would come at a cost. In fact, the teams that are assigned these subjects will each receive $3 million just to come up with their proposals.

所有这些任务均不涉及宇航员。机器人宇宙飞船将完成太空旅行，当然所有这些都要付出代价。事实上，分配到这些项目的团队每人将获得300万美元来提出方案。

If any of those are approved for missions, space.com says each one would be limited to a price of $500 million but that doesn't include the costs of launching the spacecraft and supporting it while it's in space. And for reference, the Juno mission alone from developing the spacecraft to getting it off the ground to processing all of its information was more than $1 billion. NASA could choose to give two of these new missions the green light.

space.com表示，如果任何一个项目获准执行，那每项任务的资金上限为5亿美元，但这并不包括发射宇宙飞船以及在太空中为其提供支持的费用。作为参考，仅“朱诺”任务，从宇宙飞船的研发到将其送离地面、再到处理所有信息，耗资就超过了10亿美元。NASA可以选择批准其中两项新任务。