We need to get the hell out of here

我们得离开这鬼地方

The premise of the movie Gravity is that space debris hits the International Space Station电影《地心引力》的开头讲述了 太空垃圾撞击国际空间站后it causes utter destruction which is a little unrealistic对其造成了彻底的毁坏 虽然这可能性不大

but that scenario is actually what people are scared of但实际上这也反映出了 人们非常害怕这种情况的发生My name is Amber Yang, I am 19 years old

我是安布尔·扬 今年19岁

And I am a physics major college student at Stanford University我是斯坦福大学物理系的一名学生

I'm also the founder of Seer Tracking

我也是Seer Tracking的创始人

We take the data of current satellites and spacecraft我们所做的就是获取当前太空上的卫星和航天器的数据and try to predict if there will be any collisions with space debris并预测它们是否会与太空垃圾发生碰撞

So space debris is any defunct man-made space part or spacecraft太空垃圾是所有已经失效的人造太空部件和航天器的统称that is orbiting in low-earth orbit right now这些太空垃圾现在正在近地轨道上运行

They can be as small as a paint fleck to as big as a completely dead satellite小到油漆碎片 大到报废的卫星

And they often travel as fast as 17,500 miles per hour它们通常以每小时17500英里的速度行进

and you can only imagine with something traveling that quickly不难想象 它们运动的速度有多快

that its impact on another orbiting object will be extremely large and will cause lots of damage这将对另一个轨道上的物体产生巨大的影响 甚至是毁灭性破坏This space debris could have such a big impact on essentially the success of the American space program这些太空垃圾可能会对美国太空计划能否成功产生重大的影响and mankind's advancement into space technologies它关乎着人类探索太空的进程

I watched this series of videos that astronaut Scott Kelly published我之前有看过宇航员斯科特·凯利发布的这一系列视频He would have to duck into the Soyuz capsule视频中的他不得不躲入联盟号太空舱

which is an adjacent capsule to the International Space Station这个联盟号太空舱是与国际空间站相邻的太空舱because there was fear that the spacecraft that he was in might be hit by space debris因为担心他所在的宇宙飞船可能会被太空垃圾击中We're just inside one minute from the time of closest approach最近的太空垃圾还有一分钟就要撞上我们了

It first became like an issue around the 1950's20世纪50年代左右 第一例有关太空垃圾的问题出现了and really in the past few decades, that number has only skyrocketed在此之后的几十年里 这个数字一直在飙升

There is a concept that

有观点认为

as the space debris collide with other space debris and other objects当太空垃圾与其他太空垃圾或是其他物体碰撞时that fragmentation will cause even more space debris to occur这些碎片又将会造成更多的太空垃圾

Currently the method for tracking space debris is extremely inaccurate at times目前 跟踪太空垃圾的方法有时是非常不准确的because the orbit of space debris changes so quickly因为太空垃圾的轨道变化非常快

The method that I have introduced

我所介绍的方法

is using artificial neural networks and artificial intelligence to track space debris是使用人工神经网络和人工智能来跟踪太空垃圾An artifical neural network is essentially a computer's version of the human mind人工神经网络从本质上讲 就是运用了人类思维的电脑系统It will provide a prediction, it will say它会提供一种预测

I think this is where the space debris will be in this future point in time预测出太空垃圾将会出现的时间和地点

And if we find the actual point in time in the future where the space debris is并且如果我们能知道太空垃圾的实际时间和地点的话and there is an error metric between the artificial neural network这样就能人知道工神经网络技术预测出来的位置and where the space debris actually is

和太空垃圾实际出现在的位置之间的偏差了

we can tell the neural network that oh you're wrong by this amount我们就可以告诉神经网络 哦你错了这么多

I am basically allowing the artificial intelligence to learn我一直在让人工智能不断地学习

the patterns of how the space debris positions are changing over time让它们学习太空垃圾的位置是怎么随时间变化的and it will keep training itself until its predictions are actually very very accurate然后人工智能就会一直训练自己 直到它的预测非常非常准确为止The primary concern would be for things already orbiting in space我们现在主要担心的是那些已经在太空轨道上运行的物体and trying to allow these things orbiting in space to have enough time to move out of  a collision's way我们会试图让这些物体在太空轨道上有足够的时间来避开碰撞If my software predicts that there would be a future collision如果我的软件预测未来会发生碰撞的话

Another thing that it could be readily used for这个软件还有另一个用途

is predicting when is the best optimal launch time for things like NASA and SpaceX就是可以帮助NASA和SpaceX预测最佳发射时间

when they're trying to find a time window where to launch their rockets and other space cargo当他们想确定火箭和其他航天载送物的发送时间窗口时They want to look at a window where there isn't a lot of space debris他们想要发射到的地方肯定是太空垃圾没那么多的地方Right now a lot of people are putting space debris on the back burner现在很多人都把太空垃圾的问题放在次要位置

they're saying it could be potentially very dangerous someday他们认为这些太空垃圾有一天可能会非常危险

but right now it's not that big of a concern because we haven't really had any casualties yet但目前来看这不是一个大问题 因为它还没有造成任何的人员伤亡But the very terrifying version of the Kessler syndrome would be a space atmosphere so trashed但如果发展到凯斯勒现象最坏的情况 意味着太空环境已经太糟糕了that you couldn't launch anything up without it being hit by space debris在这种太空环境下 你发射的任何物体都有可能被太空垃圾击中The whole goal is that we're trying to preserve our Earth我们的目标是保护我们的地球

our atmosphere for future generations in front of us为我们的子孙后代保护好大气层

and in order to keep developing technologies that will succeed and go to space为了继续发展能够成功进入太空的技术

We need to make sure that there is enough space in space to not be hit by space debris我们需要确保太空中有足够空间是没有太空垃圾的