Orbital ecosystem

轨道的生态系统

A new business in small satellites orbiting the Earth

这是一项围绕地球运行的小型卫星的新业务

词汇

Orbit/绕…轨道而行

Looking at the Earth from above

俯瞰地球

 

IN MAY 1999 a group of researchers from the Technical University of Berlin launched an unusual satellite. At a time when most of the machinery in orbit weighed thousands of kilograms, TUBSAT was a petite 45kg. A box that measured 32cm on each side, it carried three video cameras, the idea being to test whether such a titchy spacecraft could capture useful imagery of Earth. The researchers cited low mass, and the resultant low costs, as the benefits of such comparatively tiny satellites. They promised to open up “new market areas” for Earth observation.

1999年5月，柏林技术大学的一组研究人员发射了一颗不同寻常的卫星。当轨道上的大多数机械重达数千公斤时，颇显“娇小”的TUBSAT只有45公斤。它的每一面都有一个32厘米的盒子，盒子里装有三个摄像机，这个想法是为了测试这样一个小宇宙飞船能否捕捉到有用的地球图像。研究人员称，这种相对较小的卫星的优点是质量小，成本低。他们承诺为地球观测开辟“新市场”。

词汇

Petite/娇小的，小个子的

Titchy/很小的

 

It took around 15 years for them to be proved right. A few such “smallsats”, sometimes called nanosats or CubeSats, were launched every year in the decade up until 2014, when numbers spiked. Planet Labs, a Californian company founded by ex-Nasa engineers, launched 33 smallsats that year, each weighing just a few kilos. Planet’s satellites are spiritual successors of TUBSAT, designed to gather imagery of the Earth’s surface. The firm sells its customers images from around 150 active satellites it has in orbit.

他们花了大约15年的时间想法才得到认可。在2014年之前的10年里，每年都会发射一些这样的“小型卫星”，有时也被称为纳米卫星或立方体卫星。由美国宇航局前工程师创立的加州行星实验室公司在那一年发射了33颗小型卫星，每颗卫星只有几公斤重。Planet的卫星是TUBSAT的精神继承者，旨在收集地球表面的图像。该公司向客户出售其轨道上约150颗现役卫星的图像。

 

Planet Labs is an industry leader. The cost of making and launching satellites has tumbled, enabling an array of new space-based businesses to emerge. In the past year smallsats have been launched that can use radar to peer through clouds or darkness. Others watch for illegal shipping activities and yet more are built to service or move around other satellites in orbit. Perhaps the most outlandish venture is a rescue satellite, designed to pull other satellites down to safety if something goes wrong, to avoid catastrophic collisions with neighbours.

Planet Labs是行业领导者。制造和发射卫星的成本大幅下降，使一系列新的太空业务得以涌现。在过去的一年里，已经发射了小型卫星，可以使用雷达透视云层或黑暗区域。还有一些人在监视非法运输活动，还有更多的人是为了服务或绕轨道上的其他卫星运行而建造的。也许最古怪的冒险是一颗救援卫星，它的设计目的是，如果出了问题，将其他卫星拉到安全地带，以避免与邻国发生灾难性的碰撞。

 

Much of the recent attention has focused on the internet-connection constellations in low Earth orbit proposed by SpaceX and OneWeb. These have long been planned, and the billions of dollars required to install them are feeding the entire market.

最近的注意力主要集中在SpaceX和OneWeb提出的近地轨道上基于大量小型卫星建立的“互联网星群”项目。这些都是长期计划好的，安装它们所需的数十亿美元正在供应整个市场。

词汇

Constellation/星座；星群

Many of the capabilities of the new smallsats already existed, but mostly as government projects or as secretive intelligence operations. America has long sought to inhibit the commercial development of radar satellites, so powerful are their surveillance properties. Military radar satellites, which bounce radio waves off the surface of the Earth in order to build up a detailed picture of it, were said to be capable of detecting enemy submarines by measuring the tiny disturbances that their wakes left in the curvature of the surface of the ocean.

新小型卫星的许多功能已经实现，但主要是作为政府项目或秘密情报行动。长期以来，美国一直试图抑制雷达卫星的商业发展，因为它们的监视功能非常强大。军事雷达卫星能够将无线电波从地球表面反射回来，以便对其形成详细的图像，据说能够通过测量它们的尾迹在海洋表面弯曲处留下的微小扰动来探测敌方潜艇。

词汇

Curvature/弯曲；曲度

 

Payam Banazadeh, the boss of Capella Space, a startup based in San Francisco and founded in 2016, says his firm will use smallsats to work similar magic. Capella’s satellites will use radio waves, rather than light, to create images of the surface of the Earth. Mr Banazadeh says that his smallsats will be able to measure the volume of oil-storage tanks, for example, which are often open-topped to avoid fire risks, simply by pinging a radar beam into them. The first operational satellite is intended to launch this year, one of a planned constellation of 36. A competitor, Finnish company ICEYE, already has satellites in orbit gathering data.

帕亚姆·巴纳扎德(Payam Banazadeh)是总部位于旧金山的创业公司Capella Space的老板，该公司成立于2016年。卡佩拉的卫星将使用无线电波而不是光来创建地球表面的图像。Banazadeh先生说，他的小型卫星将能够测量储油罐的体积，例如，这些储油罐通常是敞开式的，以避免火灾风险，只需将雷达波束射入储油罐即可。首颗运行中的卫星计划于今年发射，是计划中的36颗星群之一。竞争对手，芬兰ICEYE公司已经在轨道上安装了卫星来收集数据。

 

Capella relies on a host of new space businesses as suppliers. Blue Canyon Technologies, founded in 2008, will provide small thrusters that allow the satellites to be pointed at specific spots on Earth. A company called Phase Four, founded in 2015, will provide tiny ion drives that will allow Capella’s satellites to adjust their altitude as needed. This will let the firm capture a wider variety of imagery.

卡佩拉依靠大量新的太空企业作为供应商。成立于2008年的Blue Canyon Technologies公司将提供小型推进器，使卫星能够对准地球上的特定地点。成立于2015年的“第四阶段”公司将提供微型离子驱动器，使卡佩拉的卫星能够根据需要调整高度。这将使公司获得更广泛的图像。

词汇

Thruster/推进器

Another new firm, Hawkeye360, takes a different approach. Instead of pinging the surface of the Earth with radio waves, it listens for any that are being emitted by activity down below. This kind of orbital signal sniffing also used to be the domain of governments. But smallsats have advanced to the point where Hawkeye can deploy clusters of three radio-frequency sensing satellites to pick up weak signals from the ground. The company says its primary service will be maritime surveillance, looking for anomalous radio signals such as a fishing vessel turning off its automated identification tracker near a marine protected zone. The stated purpose is to stop illegal fishing and keep ports secure, but it is easy to see how the smallsats could be used to curb oceanic migration too. Hawkeye’s first cluster of satellites has been in orbit since December 2018.

另一家新公司Hawkeye360采取了不同的方法。它不是用无线电波“撞击”地球表面来获取信息，而是在地球上进行的活动所发出的任何信号。这种轨道信号嗅探技术也曾是政府的研究领域。但是小型卫星已经发展到鹰眼可以部署由三颗射频传感卫星组成的集群从地面接收微弱信号的程度。该公司表示，其主要服务将是海上监视，寻找异常无线电信号，比如一艘渔船在海洋保护区附近关闭自动识别跟踪器。声明的目的是停止非法捕鱼并保持港口安全，但是很容易看出小型卫星也可以用来抑制海洋移民。自2018年12月以来，鹰眼的第一组卫星已经进入轨道。

 

The data deluge

海量的数据

词汇

deluge/洪水，大雨；蜂拥而至的事物

 

All of these new forms of imaging generate huge volumes of data—terabytes a day, enough that getting it down to the ground for processing becomes its own problem. Some companies want to reduce the amount of data they send back by processing some of it up in space (see article). Barry Matsumori, a space-industry veteran, is boss of Bridgesat, a company that has developed a tiny, powerful laser, which can be embedded in spacecraft and which can beam data down to ground stations at extremely high bandwidths. ICEYE is one of its first customers. Bridgesat’s first ground station, in California, is already in operation, and more in Italy and Sweden are on their way. The plan is to have ten around the world.

所有这些新的成像形式每天都会产生大量兆兆字节的数据，这足以让处理这些数据成为它自己的问题。一些公司希望通过在太空中处理数据来减少他们发回的数据量。Barry Matsumori，一位航天工业的资深人士，是Bridgesat公司的老板。Bridgesat公司已经开发出一种微小的、强大的激光，这种激光可以嵌入宇宙飞船，并且可以将数据以极高的带宽传输到地面站。ICEYE是其首批客户之一。Bridgesat在加州的第一个地面站已经投入使用，意大利和瑞典的更多地面站也在建设中。计划是在世界各地建立十个。

词汇

Terabytes/  兆兆字节（信息量单位）

 

The firm has competition from Amazon, which just announced its own backbone service for data out of orbit and into its data centres, called AWS Ground Station. Capella is an early customer of the service, which uses radio waves rather than lasers to get data down from orbit. As with Amazon’s cloud-computing business, the idea with Ground Station is to invest in plenty of expensive infrastructure and then charge startups only for what they use, making it easier and more affordable to run a business up in space.

该公司面临着来自亚马逊的竞争，亚马逊刚刚宣布了自己的主干网服务，即AWS地面站，服务于轨道外和数据中心的数据。卡佩拉是这项服务的早期客户，该服务使用无线电波而不是激光从轨道上获取数据。就像亚马逊的云计算业务一样，地面站的理念是投资大量昂贵的基础设施，然后根据初创企业的使用情况向它们收费，让它们更容易、更负担得起在太空开展业务。

词汇

Backbone/脊骨；骨干

Infrastructure/基础设施；公共建设

 

Managing all those extra satellites gets tricky when the companies launching them have to get their orbits perfect the first time. Currently, companies get only one shot. D-Orbit, an Italian company, has built a “carrier” satellite that is designed to boost already-launched smallsats to their correct configuration.

当发射这些额外卫星的公司必须在第一时间将它们的轨道变得完美时，管理这些额外的卫星就变得棘手起来。目前，企业只有一次机会。一家意大利公司D-Orbit已经建造了一颗“载波”卫星，旨在将已经发射的小型卫星提升到正确的布局。

 词汇

configuration/布局；结构；构造；格局

Perhaps the most futuristic new problem for the space business is the risk of debris. The concern is that, with so many new satellites in orbit operated by so many different companies, the chance of losing control of one goes up. A collision could be disastrous, producing a wave of debris with a high chance of wiping out other satellites, potentially crippling the whole commercial low-Earth orbit ecosystem at a stroke. Astroscale, a Japanese company, is tackling this problem by building a prototype craft capable of being launched at short notice in order to grab any malfunctioning satellite and pull it down into the atmosphere where it will burn up before it can collide with anything. The “rescue” craft will use computer vision to lock onto the out-of-control satellite and match velocity with it, then latch onto it magnetically. The company, which has raised $132m in the past few years, is planning a demonstration of its technology next year.

也许对航天事业来说，最具未来主义色彩的新问题是碎片的风险。令人担忧的是，随着如此多的新卫星在轨道上由如此多不同的公司运营，失去对其中一颗卫星的控制的几率上升。碰撞可能是灾难性的，产生一波碎片，极有可能摧毁其他卫星，有可能一举摧毁整个商业近地轨道生态系统。一家日本公司Astroscale（有太空清洁工的含义）正在解决这个问题，他们正在建造一艘能够在短时间内发射的原型飞船，以便抓住任何一颗发生故障的卫星，并将其拖到大气层中，在它与任何物体相撞之前将其烧毁。“救援”飞船将利用计算机视觉锁定失控的卫星，并与之匹配速度，然后用磁力锁定卫星。该公司在过去几年筹集了1.32亿美元，计划明年展示其技术。

词汇

Futuristic/极其现代的；未来派的

Debris/ 碎片，残骸

Astroscale/太空清洁工

Earth’s orbits suddenly look busier than ever before. Companies are going into space because it offers a different vantage point, allowing them to gather valuable new, previously-unaffordable information. TUBSAT’s “new market areas” are at last open for business.

地球轨道突然变得比以往任何时候都要繁忙。企业之所以进入太空，是因为它提供了一个不同的有利局面，让它们能够收集到以前无法负担的有价值的新信息。TUBSAT的“新市场区域”终于开始营业了。

词汇

Vantage/优势；有利情况