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NASA Wants To Send Your Name To Mars In 2020
May 22, 2019
MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST: NASA has a frequent flyer program that's out of this world - literally. People who sign up to send their names to Mars on the next rover mission will earn 313,586,649 award miles from the space agency. NPR science correspondent Joe Palca has details.
JOE PALCA, BYLINE: It's all part of a public engagement campaign to get people interested in the Mars 2020 mission, a rover mission that will look for signs of ancient life on Mars. The names will be microscopic, etched into a silicon chip that will ride along with the rover. More than a million people signed up in the first 24 hours.
EMILY LAKDAWALLA: You know, it's remarkable how many people just love to send their names to other destinations.
PALCA: That's Emily Lakdawalla with The Planetary Society. She says NASA has sent names on a number of its space missions. So has the Japanese space agency.
LAKDAWALLA: There's another spacecraft named Hayabusa2 that carried names that were engraved on a little baseball-sized target marker that they've dropped on the surface of an asteroid. So there are names all over the solar system right now. And it's a way that people feel they can participate in space exploration.
PALCA: Lakdawalla says, yes, awarding people with frequent flyer miles for sending their names to Mars is a gimmick.
LAKDAWALLA: But it's a gimmick that engages people and gets people to think about the distances between planets. It's just one more hook to take something that's kind of cute and give a little spoon-feed of education along with it.
PALCA: Mars 2020 is scheduled to launch from Cape Canaveral next July. And if all goes well, it will land on a spot on Mars called Jezero crater in February 2021. Joe Palca, NPR News.
知识点笔记：
1.Mars：火星
不知大家看过或听过没，曾经有一本关于男女认知不同及情感关系的畅销书："Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus"（《男人来自火星，女人来自金星》）。
rover：探测器
e.g.1.But, uh, no, the Rover is not responding.
2.lunar rover月球车
spacecraft：航天器、宇宙飞船
类似的构词：aircraft：飞行器、飞机
2.frequent flyer program：在后面的段落中对此有解释："...awarding people with frequent flyer miles for sending their names to Mars is a gimmick." 这就是飞行常客奖励计划，航空公司对于忠实顾客的奖励，可以用里程兑换机票、贵宾服务等等。
3.space agency:航天局
NASA:National Aeronautics and Space Administration（美国）国家航空航天局
4.public engagement campaign公众参与的活动
microscopic:非常微小的
e.g.1....microscopic fibres of protein.
2.So protons are exceedingly microscopic, to say the very least.etch和后面的engrave意思相近，刻上
silicon chip：芯片
e.g.Silicon Valley硅谷
6.asteroid：小行星（在火星及木星轨道间围绕太阳运行）
planet：行星
the solar system太阳系
e.g.1.The same was probably true of the planets shattered to make asteroids.
2.There are nine planets in the solar system.
7.gimmick:（引人注意或关注的）噱头，花招
e.g.1.It is just a public relations gimmick...
2.The exhibition is informative, up to date, and mercifully free of gimmicks.
3.Unfortunately, that gimmick only sets up another shutdown threat two weeks before Christmas.
8.hook：something that is attractive and gets people's interest and attention有吸引力、引人注意的事物
e.g. You always need a bit of a hook to get people to go to the theatre.
9.spoon-feed：用汤匙喂，引申为填鸭式灌输
e.g.1.They were less willing to be spoon-fed doctrines from Japan...
2.The children who were spoon-fed consumerism have discovered that the years of excess are over.
3.Failure is just life trying to move us in another direction. Now, when you down in a hole, it looks like failure. So, this past year, I had to spoon-feed those words to myself.