China’s telescope, planned to be launched at the end of 2023, is expected to provide humankind with fresh knowledge about distant galaxies, mysterious dark matter, and the past and future evolutions of the universe.

Chinese Survey Space Telescope (CSST), also known as Xuntian Space Telescope, is a space-based optical (光学的) observatory for astronomers to carry out sky surveys, capturing a general map or images of the sky.

The CSST is a bus-sized facility with a length equal to that of a three-storied building. It has an aperture (孔径) of two meters, a bit smaller than the Hubble Space Telescope, but its field of view is 350 times larger than Hubble in area. “The field of view is the area of the sky a telescope can see at one time,” said Li Ran, project scientist of the CSST Scientific Data Reduction System. “Hubble’s field of view is approximately one percent of the size of a fingernail at an arm’s length, thereby the telescope, in its thirties, observed only a tiny part of the sky.” Li added.

The telescope, during its normal observations, will fly independently in the same orbit as China’s space station but will maintain a large distance apart. Li said the telescope was designed, in its initial plan, to be placed on the space station, but there would be disadvantages such as vibration, potential pollution and line-of-sight block from the space station. The CSST can land on the space station for refueling and servicing as needed.

“The telescope can bring China’s research in optical astronomy to the forefront of the world and help cultivate (培养) world-class Chinese scientists,” Li noted. “It can also take breathtaking visible pictures, allowing the public to directly feel and understand the universe.”

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to travel to a foreign country without having to worry about the headache of communicating in a different language?

In a recent Wall Street Journal article, technology policy expert Alec Ross argued that, within ten years or so, we would be able to communicate with one another through small earpieces with built-in microphones. That’s because technological progress is extremely fast. It’s only a matter of time. Such is the belief among certain parents that the technology is imminent and they’re wondering if their kids should learn a second language.

It’s true that an increase in the quantity and accuracy of the data loaded into computers will make them cleverer at translating “Noes Bueno dormer mucho” into “It’s not good to sleep too much”. Replacing a word with its equivalent (对等词) in the target language is actually the easy part of a translator’s job. But even this seems to be a difficult job for computers.

It’s so hard for computers because translation doesn’t — or shouldn’t — involve simply translating words, sentences or paragraphs. Rather, it’s about translating meaning. And in order to infer meaning from a specific expression, people need to understand a lot of information all at once. Think about all the related clues that help us understand what someone is trying to say: volume, gesture, situations, and even your culture. All are likely to convey as much meaning as the words you use.

Therefore, we should doubt a machine that can’t understand our world like we do. If people from different cultures can upset each other without realizing it, how can we expect a machine to do better? Unless engineers actually find a way to breathe a soul into a computer, undoubtedly when it comes to conveying and interpreting meaning using a natural language, a machine will never fully take our place.

Moon dust is the absolute worst. Not only does electrostatics (静电) cause it to stick to virtually everything, but it also has the consistency and feel of finely ground fiberglass. It was a genuine problem for the six Apollo crews who visited the moon’s surface — moon dust covered their suits, worked their way into engines and electronics, and even ruined a few of their extremely expensive spacesuits.

These are all serious issues to consider ahead of NASA’S planned return to the moon’s surface in 2025, but a team of college undergraduates at Washington State University just developed a solution to moon dust — spraying liquid nitrogen (氮) onto moon dust. The team developed a new spray that takes advantage of the Leidenfrost effect. Named after its discoverer, an 18^th-century German doctor Johann Gottlob Leidenfrost, it occurs when a liquid comes into close contact with a significantly hotter surface, causing it to quickly form a protective layer of vapor (蒸汽) that briefly keeps it from evaporating, such as when water forms into drops and runs across a very hot frying nan. The same principle works similarly in space. In this case, a liquid nitrogen spray (typically around -320℉) comes into contact with a surface’s relatively warmer lunar dust coating, causing the particles to turn into things like drops and float away on the nitrogen vapors.

To test their spray, the research team first dressed a Barbie doll wrapped with a material used to make spacesuits. They then sprayed it with liquid nitrogen in a normal atmospheric condition as well as the circumstances similar to outer space. Not only did the liquid nitrogen spray perform better in the latter circumstances, but also it only resulted in minimal damage to the spacesuit material. In past lunar missions, astronauts’ specialized brushes for the moon dust task often caused damage to spacesuits after a single use. In comparison, the liquid nitrogen spray took 75 uses before similar issues occurred.

Going forward, the team hopes to further research the complexity that makes the cleaning process so effective, as well as secure funding to construct testing rooms more closely resembling the lunar surface’s gravity. With any luck, maybe a can of their Moon-Dust-Gone will be aboard a future Artemis mission, ready to help astronauts avoid one of the lunar surface’s annoying things.