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| America was a nation divided, but that did not stop it from building parts of the James Webb Space Telescope in a red state and testing them in a blue one. |
| 虽然美国国内存在严重分裂，但这并不妨碍詹姆斯·韦伯太空望远镜的部件在一个红州建造、在一个蓝州测试。 |
| The European Union and Russia were facing off over Ukraine and other issues this year, but scientists from both sides will benefit greatly from the discoveries that could soon be within reach. |
| 虽然欧盟与俄罗斯今年在乌克兰及其他问题上出现对抗，但双方的科学家们都将从不久能获得的发现中极大地受益。 |
| And while the pandemic snarled supply chains around the world, no lockdown could derail the telescope’s trajectory to the stars: Parts were assembled across multiple nations, then tested in the United States and the final product ended up on a launchpad in French Guiana before being hurtled into outer space on Christmas Day. |
| 虽然新冠肺炎疫情阻塞了世界各地的供应链，但任何封锁都阻止不了韦伯望远镜奔向遥远星空：部件的组装在多个国家进行，然后在美国测试，成品最后运到法属圭亚那的发射台，在圣诞节那天发射升空。 |
| In some ways, the James Webb Space Telescope told a story seldom heard these days; the tale of nations coming together for a common ambition. At a time when countries are divided over climate change, migration and a disease that has killed millions, the spacecraft — launched to search for habitable planets and to seek out the earliest, most distant stars and galaxies — was a potent reminder that international cooperation on grand-scale projects was still possible. |
| 在某种意义上，詹姆斯·韦伯太空望远镜讲述了一个这些日子日里很少听到的故事，一个各国为共同追求目标走到一起的故事。虽然各国在气候变化、移民和一个已导致百万人死亡的疾病等问题上存在分歧，但这个为探索宜居行星以及寻找最早、最遥远的恒星和星系的航天器发射升空，有力地提醒人们，在大规模的项目上进行国际合作仍然是可能的。 |
| “I like to think that science is a way to moderate some of the extreme situations that we have on this planet,” said Martin Barstow, a professor of astrophysics and space science at the University of Leicester in England, who oversaw the telescope’s mission control center. “And I’ve always seen space as an area where we cooperate, through all the trying times.” |
| “我倾向于认为，科学是缓和我们在地球上遇到的一些极端情况的方法，”英国莱斯特大学的天体物理学和空间科学教授马丁·巴斯托说，他负责该望远镜任务控制中心的工作。“我一直认为，太空是我们的一个合作领域，尽管经历了这么艰难的时期。” |
| With cooperation, however, has come competition as well. China, which did not participate in the project, is intending to launch its own space telescope expected to be a kind of competitor. China has also been teaming up with Russia on its own missions as the Russia-U.S. space alliance has come under strain because of political tensions between the countries. |
| 但是，有合作就有竞争。没有参与这个项目的中国，正计划发射自己的太空望远镜，预计会形成某种竞争。中国也正在与俄罗斯合作执行自己的任务，与此同时，由于俄罗斯与美国的政治关系紧张，两国在太空方面的合作已面临压力。 |
| Still, the conception and launch of the telescope, which took more than 30 years, entailed not only the cooperation of scientists around the globe, but sharing the $10 billion cost, which was covered largely by the U.S. Unlike the Perseverance rover to Mars, a mostly American affair that launched last year and was overseen by the NASA, the James Webb Space Telescope was a joint venture of NASA, the Canadian Space Agency and the European Space Agency — the biggest and most expensive space-based observatory ever built. |
| 尽管如此，从构想到发射总共用了30多年时间的韦伯望远镜不仅需要有全球科学家的合作，其100亿美元的造价也需要由各国分摊，但经费主要来自美国。与“毅力”号火星探测器不同（该探测器主要是美国项目，于去年由NASA发射升空），詹姆斯·韦伯太空望远镜是美国国家航空航天局、加拿大航天局以及欧洲航天局的合作项目，也是迄今为止建造的最大、最昂贵的以太空为基地的天文站。 |
| Even as upheavals on both sides of the Atlantic altered the political landscape, none of it affected the telescope project. The work transcended the rise of Donald J. Trump in the United States, Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union and the growing popularity of nationalist movements in Europe, including many whose adherents have questioned the science of vaccines. |
| 即使在大西洋两岸的剧变改变了政治格局的时候，这个项目也没有受到影响。这项工作超越了唐纳德·特朗普在美国的兴起、英国的脱欧，以及欧洲日益流行的民族主义运动，包括支持者质疑疫苗科学性的许多类似运动。 |
| When the pandemic brought travel bans throughout the world, German scientists had to figure out how to remotely test parts of the telescope that were sitting in Redondo Beach, Calif. |
| 新冠肺炎疫情导致全球范围的旅行禁令后，德国科学家不得不想办法远程测试位于加州雷东多比奇的望远镜部件。 |
| “I had been coming frequently to Los Angeles and then you suddenly couldn’t do that,” said Oliver Krause of the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Germany, who is working on the Webb telescope’s successor, which is already underway in California. He said the teams spent weeks devising workarounds. |
| “我之前经常去洛杉矶，后来突然不能去了，”德国马克斯·普朗克天文研究所的奥利弗·克劳斯说，他正在为韦伯望远镜的下一代工作，该工作目前已经在加州展开。他说，他的团队花了数周时间为远程测试设计解决方案。 |
| Mr. Krause’s own contributions were key pieces of the engineering puzzle — the wheels that allow the telescope’s mid-infrared camera and spectrograph to switch between various modes. His team in Heidelberg, Germany, was chosen to build them because of its long expertise in the moving parts of telescopes. |
| 克劳斯本人的贡献是解决了这个复杂工程的几个关键问题，也就是让望远镜的中红外相机和光谱仪在各种模式之间转换的轮子。他在德国海德堡的团队之所以被选中建造这些部件，是因为他们在望远镜移动部件方面有长期的专业知识。 |
| “It’s key because if the wheel gets stuck in an intermediate position, you’ll suddenly have no light coming in,” he said, praising German engineering. Other parts of the telescope, like its sun shield, were built in locales like Huntsville, Ala. |
| “这是关键，因为如果轮子卡在某个中间位置的话，突然光就进不来了，”他说，并赞扬了德国的工程学。望远镜的其他部分，比如遮阳板，是在美国阿拉巴马州的亨茨维尔建造的。 |
| Just as the parts of the telescope navigated borders and political divides, so did experts like Sarah Kendrew, an instrument and calibration scientist at the European Space Agency who is also an astronomer. |
| 天文学家萨拉·肯德鲁等专家，也与望远镜的部件一样，能跨越边界和政治分歧，肯德鲁是欧洲航天局从事仪器研究和校准的科学家。 |
| Ms. Kendrew helped create one of the key components of the telescope, the Mid-Infrared Instrument, or MIRI. The device is able to detect light from the mid-infrared region of the electromagnetic spectrum — unseen to the eye — and can reveal faint galaxies, stars in formation as well as planets orbiting other stars, known as exoplanets. |
| 肯德鲁帮助制作了望远镜的一个关键组成部分：简称MIRI的中红外仪器。该仪器能探测来自电磁波谱中红外波段的光（这种光肉眼无法识别），从而能揭示微弱的星系、正在形成的恒星，以及围绕其他恒星运行的行星，即所谓的系外行星。 |
| Ms. Kendrew’s work on MIRI began during a postdoctoral fellowship in the Netherlands in 2008. She then moved to Germany, where the instrument was tested, and to Britain, continuing work on MIRI and other astronomical instruments. Finally, in 2016, she moved to Baltimore, which became the telescope’s mission control center. |
| 肯德鲁为MIRI工作始于2008年，那年，她拿到了一个荷兰的博士后奖学金。后来，她搬到了德国，因为仪器的测试工作在当地进行。再后来，她又去了英国，继续从事MIRI和其他天文仪器的研制。最后，在2016年，她搬到了美国的巴尔的摩，那里是韦伯望远镜的任务控制中心。 |
| “Science is one of these areas where you have to learn to work across borders and across political divides,” she said shortly after she returned home from Kourou, French Guiana, a French territory in South America where she watched the liftoff of the telescope. |
| “科学是一个人们必须学会如何跨越国界和政治分歧工作的领域，”她从法属圭亚那的库鲁回美国后不久说道，她在那里观看了望远镜的发射。 |
| There seemed to be something hopeful about the launch itself, coming at the end of an extremely difficult year in a world desperate for good news. Watched in many countries, it harked back to the opening of the International Space Station two decades ago, or the early Apollo missions to the moon, when people tuned in to see the space race unfold around the globe. |
| 这次发射本身似乎充满了希望，因为发射的时间是在极其艰难的一年即将结束、这个世界渴望听到好消息之际。许多国家都播放了发射过程，让人们回想起20年前国际空间站的建成，或是更早的阿波罗登月计划，当时，人们在电视上看到了全球太空竞赛的展开。 |
| “Everywhere in the world, people watched the launch of James Webb,” said Michaël Gillon, a Belgian astrophysicist involved with the project. “Even if they are in China or North Korea, it’s something that’s interesting for them. And the possibility of discovery interests people whatever their religion or political system.” |
| “世界各地的人都观看了詹姆斯·韦伯的发射，”参与韦伯望远镜项目的比利时天体物理学家米沙莱·吉隆说。“即使在中国或朝鲜，这也是让他们感兴趣的事情。无论他们有什么样的宗教信仰或政治制度，新发现的可能性都会引起人们的兴趣。” |
| While scientists will be looking to the telescope to answer myriad questions about the universe, the one that has drawn the most excitement is something that humanity has long wondered: Will there be others looking back at us from the stars? |
| 虽然科学家们将用这个望远镜来回答有关宇宙的大量问题，但最令人兴奋的问题是人类长期以来一直想知道的：是否有从宇宙其他地方回望我们的外星人？ |
| Mr. Gillon, who looks for signs of life on other planets, is assembling the team that may one day come back with an answer. |
| 吉隆的工作是在其他星球上寻找生命迹象，他正在组建的团队也许有朝一日会找到这个问题的答案。 |
| Using earlier telescopes, Mr. Gillon discovered seven Earth-size planets in the star system Trappist-1, in the constellation Aquarius. He named each after one of his favorite beers. |
| 吉隆曾用早期的望远镜在水瓶座的Trappist-1星系中发现了七颗地球大小的行星。他用他喜欢的啤酒为每颗行星命了名。 |
| “We wanted to give a Belgian flavor to the project,” he joked. |
| “我们想给这个项目添上一点比利时色彩，”他开玩笑说。 |
| In order to fully study Trappist-1, he organized a consortium of more than 100 scientists including ones from Morocco, Japan and the Netherlands, and pooled their resources to jointly research the star system. |
| 为了对Trappist-1进行全面研究，他组织了一个来自包括摩洛哥、日本、荷兰等国的100多名科学家的联合体，集中资源共同研究这个星系。 |
| “We may even be able to detect some traces of biological activity, which is really the holy grail of the field,” Mr. Gillon said. |
| “我们也许甚至能探测到一些生物活动的痕迹，这确实是这个领域的圣杯，”吉隆说。 |
| The astronomer pondered for a moment the potential effect of finding life in the cosmos at a time when climate change and disease seem to threaten our collective future. |
| 在气候变化和疾病似乎威胁着我们的共同未来之际，这名天文学家对在宇宙中发现生命的潜在影响思考了片刻。 |
| “It wouldn’t solve all our problems,” he acknowledged. “I still think this is something that would bring magic and the feeling of being human.” |
| “这不会解决我们所有的问题，”他承认。“但我仍认为这会给身而为人的感觉和神奇之处带来某种的东西。” |
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