A space history mystery: What happened to the Viking arm used 50 years ago?

太空历史之谜：50年前用于剪彩的“海盗号”机械臂去哪了？

Michael Collins looked down at his watch. The Apollo 11 astronaut had already beaten the original schedule for the opening of the National Air and Space Museum by three days, but no one would remember that if these final 36 minutes didn’t go perfectly. 迈克尔·柯林斯（Michael Collins）低头看了看手表。作为阿波罗11号的宇航员，他已经比原定的国家航空航天博物馆开馆时间提前了三天，但如果最后这36分钟不能完美进行，没人会记得这一点。

President Gerald Ford and Vice President Nelson Rockefeller took 35 seconds to find their seats on the red, white, and blue bunting-lined outdoor stage. The flyover by the Thunderbirds was quick enough. At any other event, it would have been the only time-dependent concern of the day. 杰拉尔德·福特总统和纳尔逊·洛克菲勒副总统用了35秒才在装饰着红、白、蓝三色旗帜的户外舞台上找到座位。“雷鸟”飞行表演队的飞越过程非常迅速。在任何其他活动中，这本该是当天唯一需要精确计时的事项。

Collins kept glancing at the time. The Presentation of Colors took 20 seconds. The national anthem, performed by the Air Force band, took about 85 seconds. Then came the invocation delivered by the Bishop of Washington, and then the Secretary of the Smithsonian, Dillon Ripley, welcomed everyone who had come out for the ceremony. Warren Burger, chief justice of the United States and the chancellor of the Smithsonian, made short work of introducing the president. Ford then took to the podium at 11:13 am. 柯林斯不停地看时间。旗帜展示仪式用了20秒。空军军乐队演奏的国歌用了约85秒。随后是华盛顿主教的祈祷，接着史密森尼学会秘书长狄龙·里普利（Dillon Ripley）向出席仪式的嘉宾致欢迎辞。美国最高法院首席大法官兼史密森尼学会名誉会长沃伦·伯格（Warren Burger）简短地介绍了总统。上午11点13分，福特走上讲台。

“This beautiful new museum and its exciting exhibits of the mastery of air and space is a perfect birthday present from the American people to themselves,” he said. “Although it is almost impolite to boast, perhaps we can say with patriotic pride that the flying machines we see here, from the Wright brothers’ 12-horsepower biplane to the latest space vehicle, were mostly ‘Made in USA’.” “这座美丽的新博物馆及其展示的航空航天领域令人兴奋的成就，是美国人民送给自己的一份完美生日礼物，”他说。“虽然自夸有些失礼，但我们或许可以怀着爱国自豪感说，我们在这里看到的飞行器，从莱特兄弟的12马力双翼飞机到最新的航天器，大多是‘美国制造’。”

Nine and a half minutes later, Ford concluded. “Thomas Jefferson said, ‘I like to dream of the future better than the history of the past.’ So did his friendly rival, John Adams, who wrote of his dream ‘…to see rising in America an empire of liberty, and a prospect of two or three hundred millions of freemen, without one noble or one king among them. You say it is impossible. If I should agree with you in this, I would still say, let us try the experiment.’” 九分半钟后，福特结束了演讲。“托马斯·杰斐逊曾说：‘我喜欢憧憬未来，胜过研究过去的历史。’他的挚友兼政敌约翰·亚当斯也一样，他曾写下自己的梦想：‘……看到一个自由帝国在美国崛起，看到两三亿自由民的前景，其中没有贵族，也没有国王。你说这不可能。即使我同意你的看法，我仍会说，让我们尝试一下这个实验。’”

“I can only add, let the experiment continue,” said Ford. “我只能补充一句，让这个实验继续下去吧，”福特说道。

Red lights, green lights, snip! Everyone on the stage then moved over to the entranceway of the new building, the “Smithsonian Institution National Air and Space Museum,” as inscribed on a 12-foot-tall (4-meter) teal backdrop. Mounted atop the temporary wall were two sets of traffic lights, a pair of side-by-side green lights (currently off) and a set of red lights, now blinking. Centered in front of the wall, about 11 feet (3.45 meters) away, was a small table draped in white cloth supporting a piece of NASA hardware. It may not have been clear to all of the ceremony’s guests and spectators, but mounted to a wood base sitting atop the table was the surface sampler arm from an engineering model of a Viking Mars lander. A red, white, and blue ribbon was strung between the arm and the wall, passing through the center of the arm’s sampler end. 红灯，绿灯，剪断！舞台上的所有人随后移步至新建筑的入口处，背景是一块12英尺（4米）高的蓝绿色展板，上面刻着“史密森尼学会国家航空航天博物馆”。临时墙上方安装了两组交通信号灯，一组是并排的绿灯（当时熄灭），另一组是正在闪烁的红灯。在墙前约11英尺（3.45米）的中心位置，放着一张铺着白布的小桌子，上面支撑着一件NASA的硬件。或许在场的嘉宾和观众并不清楚，但安装在桌上木质底座上的，正是“海盗号”火星着陆器工程模型上的表面采样机械臂。一条红、白、蓝三色的丝带连接在机械臂和墙壁之间，穿过了机械臂采样端的中心。

About 36 minutes earlier, NASA initiated a signal to the real Viking 1 probe—then 20 days from landing on Mars—which it then relayed back to Earth. At the distance separating the two planets that day, communications took about 18 minutes one way. The well-traveled command was then received by a tracking station and sent to the engineering arm sitting in front of the museum. As Ford, Collins, and Ripley looked up, the green lights blinked on, confirming the signal had been received. 大约36分钟前，NASA向真正的“海盗1号”探测器发送了一个信号——当时它距离登陆火星还有20天——探测器随后将信号传回地球。在那一天，两颗行星之间的距离使得通信单程耗时约18分钟。这条经过长途跋涉的指令随后被地面跟踪站接收，并发送到了博物馆前的工程机械臂上。当福特、柯林斯和里普利抬头看时，绿灯亮起，确认信号已成功接收。

“I was holding my breath,” said Collins in an interview decades later recalling his role as the first director of the National Air and Space Museum. “I was thinking about all those electrons going lost up there in space and all these VIPs standing around looking at this ribbon and this mechanical shearing device and nothing would happen.” “当时我屏住了呼吸，”柯林斯在几十年后的一次采访中回忆起他作为国家航空航天博物馆首任馆长的角色时说道。“我当时在想，如果那些电子在太空中丢失了，而所有这些贵宾都站在周围看着这条丝带和这个机械剪切装置，结果却什么也没发生，那该怎么办。”

Part of the challenge was that the time of the opening kept changing. Originally, the museum was scheduled to open on July 4 as a birthday gift to the nation, but it was felt that it would compete with other bicentennial celebrations, and besides, the museum was ready to open. Then there was the lander at Mars. Viking 1 was supposed to land on July 4, but when it arrived in its certification orbit two weeks earlier, imagery of the primary landing site showed its terrain was too rough to guarantee a safe landing. NASA delayed the landing to July 20 as a more suitable landing site was sought. So Collins was already dealing with date and time changes beyond his control. 挑战的一部分在于开馆时间一直在变。最初，博物馆计划在7月4日开馆，作为送给国家的生日礼物，但人们认为这会与其他的建国两百周年庆典冲突，况且博物馆当时已经准备好开馆了。此外还有火星着陆器的问题。“海盗1号”原定于7月4日着陆，但两周前当它进入认证轨道时，主要着陆点的图像显示地形过于崎岖，无法保证安全着陆。NASA将着陆时间推迟到了7月20日，以便寻找更合适的着陆点。因此，柯林斯当时不得不应对超出他控制范围的日期和时间变动。

“But believe it or not, all of the electrons did their cute little things and the ribbon got snipped and the building got opened. It was good,” he said. “但信不信由你，所有的电子都完成了它们可爱的小任务，丝带被剪断了，大楼也顺利开放了。这感觉真好，”他说。

The doors then opened, and the public got their first look at the Wright brothers’ 1903 Flyer, Charles Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis, and NASA space capsules, including the command module Columbia that Collins… 随后大门打开，公众第一次看到了莱特兄弟的1903年“飞行者号”、查尔斯·林德伯格的“圣路易斯精神号”，以及包括柯林斯曾乘坐过的“哥伦比亚号”指令舱在内的NASA太空舱……