China’s Telescope Could Rival Hubble and James Webb

China has announced an ambitious space telescope program that would give the nation astronomy research capabilities to rival those of U.S. programs like the Hubble Space Telescope, according to Popular Science. The space telescope would have a lens 2 meters in diameter, giving it a field of view 300 times larger than that of the Hubble.

据Popular Science报道，中国已经宣布了一项雄心勃勃的太空望远镜项目。这个项目将会大大增强该国的天文学研究能力，并与美国的哈勃太空望远镜等项目相媲美。这台太空望远镜将配置直径两米的镜头，让它能够拥有哈勃望远镜300倍大的视野。

With such a large area of coverage, the space telescope would only take 10 years to survey 40 percent of the observable universe. The space telescope’s imaging capabilities would make it capable of satisfying a number of significant astronomy research needs, such as identifying exoplanets and searching for dark matter and dark energy.

既然有这么大的覆盖范围，该太空望远镜只需要十年时间就能观测可见宇宙中40%的空间。并且，这台机器卓越的成像能力让它能够满足许多重大天文研究的满足，比如说辨认外星球和寻找暗物质和暗能量。

The ambition of China’s program, announced in a parliamentary meeting earlier this year, doesn’t end there. The new telescope would be put into orbit next to the Tiangong 3 space station, planned for launch in 2022, and would be capable of docking with it. Keeping the space telescope close to the Tiangong 3 would allow Chinese astronauts, or taikonauts, to service it much more readily. (It took NASA three-and-a-half years and four servicing missions to fix a problem with the Hubble’s mirror after it launched.) China’s space telescope program could pave the way for assembling spacecraft in orbit, too.

中国的这份雄心揭露于今年年初举行的某次国务院会议，但它并不仅仅停止于此。这台新的太空望远镜将被放置在天宫三号空间站边上的轨道上。而天宫三号计划于2022年发射，并能够和这台太空望远镜对接。让太空望远镜和天宫三号保持较近距离能够让中国的宇航员们更容易地对其进行检修。（NASA花费了三年半的时间，启动了四个检修项目来解决哈勃望远镜在发射后镜子出现的问题。）同时，中国的太空望远镜项目能够为在轨道上设置更多飞行器奠定基础。

As Universe Today notes, other countries and space agencies will release a timeline and technical details about the spacecraft’s instruments when they announce a program like this. China has been more secretive with their research plans and capabilities, so it is hard to gauge the likelihood of all these plans coming together by 2030 or so (China has yet to launch the Tiangong 2, a space station planned for this year).

正如Universe Today表明，其他国家和太空机构也会在公开项目时透露时间表和太空飞行器的技术细节。而中国对其研究计划和能力则守口如瓶，所以很难估计这些计划到2030实现的可能性有多大。（中国还没有发射计划于今年发射的天宫二号）

Still, China’s apparent intent to push more aggressively into space telescope technology is encouraging. With NASA’s James Webb Telescope scheduled for launch in 2018, and more powerful radio telescopes being built on Earth, we will soon peer back in space and time further than ever before. Let the international competition to map the cosmos begin.

中国更加推进发展太空望远镜技术仍然令人鼓舞。NASA所研发的韦伯望远镜计划于2018年发射，而地球上将设置更多功能强大的电波望远镜。不久，我们就能同样在时间和空间上取得更大的进步。就让这场国际划分太空版图的国际竞争开始吧。

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来源:雅虎新闻爱语吧作者:雨西