The first of three international missions to Mars gets underway Tuesday when a Japanese H-2A rocket boosts a United Arab Emirates spacecraft known as "Hope" into space for a seven-month voyage to the red planet. It will be the first interplanetary mission ever attempted by an Arab nation.
三个登陆火星的国际任务中的首个任务于周二准备就绪，由日本的H-2A火箭搭载阿联酋的“希望号”宇宙飞船进入太空，开始为期七个月的通往这颗红色星球的航行。这将是阿联酋国家第一个星际任务。
A little more than a week later, China plans to launch its Tianwen 1 mission, sending its first orbiter and a surface rover to Mars while NASA presses ahead with launch of the agency's $2.4 billion Perseverance Mars rover, equipped with a small drone-like helicopter, on July 30. All three will reach their target in 2021.
一个多星期后，中国计划执行“天文一号”任务，向火星发射第一个轨道飞行器和一个表面探测器。此前在7月30日，美国航空航天局发射了价值24亿美元的“毅力号”火星探测器，配备一个小型无人机直升机。这三个任务将于2021年达到指定地点。
The three missions are taking advantage of a planetary launch window that only comes around once every 26 months when Earth and Mars are in favorable positions in their orbits around the sun. This year's launch window closes in mid August, and any spacecraft delayed past then will face two years of expensive storage.
这三个任务利用了行星发射窗口，26个月才会出现一次，此时地球和火星在围绕太阳的轨道上处于发射有利位置。今年的发射窗口截止8月中旬，超过这一时限没有发射的航天器就要再等上两年，而且保存费用昂贵。
The European Space Agency had planned to join Emirates, the United States and China, sending a powerful rover to Mars during the current window. But ESA recently was forced to stand down until the next window, primarily because of problems with the parachutes needed to help lower the rover to the martian surface.
欧洲航天局计划加入进来，和阿联酋航空公司、美国以及中国一起，在目前这一发射窗口内向火星发射一个强大的探测器。但最近，欧洲航天局被迫暂停发射，要等到下一个窗口了，主要是因为帮助探测器降落到火星表面的降落伞出了故障。
And so, the UAE will lead the way this year with the Emirates Mars Mission, and if all goes well, Hope will brake into orbit around Mars next February to kick off a complex mission to shed new light on the physics and chemistry of the martian atmosphere.
因此，阿联酋今年将带头执行阿联酋航空公司的火星任务。如果一切顺利，“希望号”将于明年二月份减速进入火星轨道，开始执行一项复杂的任务，刷新人类对火星大气的物理和化学认识。
翻译：菲菲