Q&V | 2026火星私奔，约吗？

火星是运行轨迹离地球最近的行星，自公元前2000年左右的古埃及时期就被人类所观测，因其鲜艳的红色表面，自古便与战争、死亡相联系。

由于火星荧荧似火，行踪捉摸不定，我国古代称它为“荧惑”；古希腊以希腊神话中战神的名字“Ares”来命名火星；古罗马则称之为“Mars”：古罗马的战神，这个名字也作为火星的名称沿用至今。

Jupiter is the king, Uranus is the comedian, Pluto is the underdog. But of all the planetary bodies in our solar system, Mars is clearly the biggest celebrity. Take a visual tour through our evolving fascination with the red planet and see how it has been venerated through the years as a powerful deity, a scientific curiosity, and a pop culture icon.

木星、天王星、冥王星分别被人们赋予了国王、喜剧演员、失败者的形象，但在太阳系的所有行星中，火星显然是最出名的。下面就速速跟我们来一场视觉之旅，追溯不同时代的人们对这颗红色星球的畅想，看看它多年来何以成为神明力量、科学奇想和流行文化的象征。

A joining of opposites: Cupid uses a special love knot to bind Mars to Venus in a painting by Paolo Veronese. 

对立的结合：在保罗·委罗内塞的画中，丘比特用一个特殊的爱情结联结了火星与金星。

Mars is the God of war; and Venus is the Goddess of love. There are many different explanations that people have came up with to explain this painting. The most common interpretation would be “Venus, the woman symbolizes chastity transformed by love into charity and that the horse held back by an armed cupid is an emblem of passion restrained.”

马尔斯（火星）是战神，维纳斯（金星）是爱神。人们对这幅画作有很多不同的解释，其中，最常见的理解是“维纳斯象征着一种贞洁，而带着武器的丘比特手中牵着的马则象征着克制的激情。”

A witness recounts an epic battle between Martians and Earthlings in H.G. Wells’s now notorious thriller. It is considered a landmark work of science fiction, and it has inspired numerous adaptations and imitations.

在赫伯特·乔治·威尔斯的惊悚科幻小说《星际战争》中，一位目击者讲述了一场火星与地球的史诗级星际之争。这部作品被认为是科幻小说界的里程碑之作，激发了无数的改编和模仿。

As he drew on his maps (below) and described in a 1906 book, Percival Lowell believed Mars was a dying world covered in irrigation canals.

正如帕西瓦尔·罗威尔在他的地图中所画，及他在一本1906年的书中所描述的那样，他认为火星是一个遍布着灌溉渠的死寂世界。

Like many early 20th-century depictions, this Danish silent film focused on Mars’s supposed inhabitants—in this case, benevolent vegetarians.

和许多二十世纪早期的作品中对火星的描述一样，《火星之旅》这部丹麦默片将视角聚焦于火星的假想居民，并将其假定为友善的素食主义者。

The film tells a story of a group of researchers from Earth travelling in a spaceship to Mars, where, to big surprise, they found a peaceful vegetarian and pacifist civilization.

电影中，一组来自地球的研究员乘坐宇宙飞船前往火星，并惊讶地发现了崇尚素食主义与和平理念的火星文明。

Drawn by Frank R. Paul for Fantastic Adventures, this Martian is telepathic and can retract his eyes and nose to protect them from freezing.

在Frank R. Paul为科幻杂志Fantastic Adventures绘制的封面中，火星人精通心灵感应术，并且能够通过回缩鼻子和眼睛来抵御严寒。

In 1948 German rocket engineer Wernher von Braun penned speculative fiction about a human mission to Mars. His work was translated into English and reprinted as The Mars Project, a 1953 book with a stunningly prescient mission concept.

1948年，德国火箭工程师沃纳•冯•布劳恩写了一本关于人类执行火星探测任务的推理小说。他的作品被译成英文并于1953年再版为《火星计划》，这本书对火星探测概念显示出了惊人的预见性。

Today von Braun is recognized as the person most responsible for laying the groundwork for public acceptance of America's space program. When President Bush directed NASA in 1989 to prepare plans for an orbiting space station, lunar research bases, and human exploration of Mars, he was largely echoing what von Braun proposed in The Mars Project.

如今，冯•布劳恩被认为是为公众接纳美国太空计划奠定基础的第一人。1989年，当布什总统指示美国国家航天局NASA准备建立轨道空间站，月球研究基地和人类探索火星的计划时，他很大程度上呼应了冯•布劳恩在《火星计划》中的提议。

In this sci-fi drama, scientists arrive on Mars to find a planet populated by a subterranean, dying race similar to humans—who may be plotting a desperate invasion of Earth.

在这部科幻电影中，科学家们到达火星，发现火星上居住着一个类似人类的濒死地下种族。这个种族可能正在策划一场对地球的绝地入侵。

Astronomer E.C. Slipher took this image from South Africa; he published his Photographic Story of Mars (1905- 1961) in 1962.

天文学家E.C.斯利弗从南非拍摄了这张照片，并在1962年出版了他的《火星摄影故事》。

When this spacecraft flew by Mars, it snapped images of a planet that looked disappointingly like the moon: cratered and sterile, without any signs of alien life.

“水手4号”航天器在接近火星时拍下了这个星球。令人失望的是，它看起来和月球差不多：表面有坑且贫瘠，而且没有外星生命迹象。

The Mariner 4 mission was one of the great successes of the early American space program. It lasted about three years in solar orbit, continuing long-term studies of the solar wind and making coordinated measurements with the Mariner 5 spacecraft.

水手4号火星探测任务是美国航天计划最为重要的成就之一。它在太阳轨道上运行了约三年之久，长期研究观察太阳风并与水手5号航天器共同完成测量任务。

（太阳风：来自太阳的带电粒子流）

For National Geographic, Carl Sagan imagined radiation-resistant Martians shielded by glassy shells, eating cabbage-like plants that fold up at night.

在《国家地理》杂志上，美国天文学家卡尔萨根设想：火星人穿着抗辐射的玻璃状防护服，吃一些晚上会折叠起来的卷心菜状植物。

NASA’s Viking mission included two orbiters and two landers, the first to take high-resolution images of Mars from its desolate surface.

美国航空航天局的维京任务包括2个卫星和2个着陆器，首次从火星荒无人烟的表面拍到高清照片。

For a brief time in 1976, it seemed as if NASA’s Viking landers had found microbes on Mars! Those results have been vigorously disputed in the years since, but the original experiment’s principal investigator, Gilbert Levin, still maintains they really did detect Martian microbes.

在1976年的一小段时间内，美国航空航天局的维京任务着陆器似乎在火星上发现了微生物！尽管这一结论在之后的几年一直饱受争议，但最初实验的首席研究员Gilbert Levin仍然坚认为他们确实发现了火星微生物。

In Andy Weir’s futuristic survival tale, astronaut Mark Watney, played by Matt Damon, is abandoned on Mars after crewmates mistake him for dead.

在安迪·韦尔执导的这部未来主义生存故事片中，由马特·达蒙饰演的宇航员马克·沃特尼被同伴误以为已经死亡，而被遗弃在火星上。

If SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has his way, a version of the retro-looking launch vehicle seen here being built in Texas will one day shuttle humans to the moon, Mars, and beyond.

如果太空探索技术公司首席执行官埃隆·马斯克能如愿以偿的话，那么目前位于德克萨斯州正在建造的复古型运载火箭有朝一日会把人类送往月球、火星和更远的地方。

NASA will send millions of names to Mars on its next mission in 2026 and anyone can sign up. The names are etched onto "fingernail-sized chips" and placed on a placard attached to the craft.

美国航空航天局将会在2026年的火星探测任务中将数百万人的名字送往火星，任何人都有机会成为这百万人之一！这些幸运儿的名字将会被刻在指甲盖儿大小的芯片上，而承载着上百万名字的芯片将会被安装在航天器中的张贴板上。

How to send your name to Mars?  Just click the link below!

https://mars.nasa.gov/participate/send-your-name/future/