中國實驗項目首登國際空間站

SpaceX last Saturday launched a shipment of supplies for the astronauts living at the International Space Station (ISS), carrying for the first time an experiment independently designed by China.

上週六，美國太空探索技術公司爲生活在國際空間站的航天員發送了一批補給，首次攜帶了由中國自主設計的實驗項目。

The SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft lifted off on the Falcon 9 rocket at 5:07 pm from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

當天下午5時7分，該公司的“龍”貨運飛船搭載“獵鷹9”火箭從佛羅里達州肯尼迪航空中心升空。

Among the cargo is a 3.5 kg device from the Beijing Institute of Technology that sought to answer questions like "Does the space radiation and microgravity cause mutations among antibody-encoding genes and how does it happen?"

飛船攜帶的貨物中有一個來自北京理工大學、重3.5公斤的裝置。該裝置試圖回答“太空輻射和微重力是否會導致抗體編碼基因的突變以及它是如何發生的？”等問題。

The Chinese payload was first reported in 2015, when an agreement was reached between the institute and NanoRacks, a Houston-based company that offers services for the commercial utilization of the space station.

2015年，北京理工大學與納諾拉克斯公司達成協議，這個中國載荷首次被報道。納諾拉克斯公司總部位於休斯頓，是一家提供國際空間站商業利用服務的企業。

Under the agreement, NanoRacks will deliver the device to the US side of the space station and astronauts there will conduct studies using the device in about two weeks, data from which will be sent back to the Chinese researchers.

根據協議，納諾拉克斯將把該裝置交付至空間站的美國部分，那裏的航天員將使用該裝置進行約兩週的研究，研究所獲數據將回傳給中國研究人員。

NASA spokesperson Kathryn Hambleton confirmed to Xinhua that there is a Chinese experiment that is launched on this mission.

NASA發言人凱瑟琳·漢布爾頓已向新華社證實，有一箇中國的實驗項目在此次發射任務中啓動。

"NASA complied with all legal requirements to notify the Congress of this activity, and all of the ISS partners approved the inclusion of the experiment," Hambleton said in an email.

漢布爾頓在一則郵件中表示：“NASA在遵守所有法律要求的前提下向國會告知這了一活動，並且已經取得了所有國際空間站合作伙伴就該實驗的批准。”