Mars iron is ideal for building future bases
| FUTURE colonisers of Mars needn't worry about lugging materials from Earth to build their bases - the most widely used building material on Earth, steel, could be manufactured on the Red Planet. |
未来移居火星的移民不必担心如何把建材从地球运往火星基地，因为地球上最广泛运用的建材——钢材——可以在这颗红色星球上制造出来。 |
| The rover Opportunity has found elemental iron - a key ingredient of steel - peppered across the Martian surface as a result of collisions with iron-rich meteorites. The dry conditions and lack of atmospheric oxygen mean that the stuff has not rusted, says Geoffrey Landis of NASA's Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, Ohio. |
“机遇”号火星探测器发现了钢材的关键成分——铁元素。由于跟富铁陨星的碰撞，铁遍布火星表面。俄亥俄州克里夫兰市美国国家航空航天局格伦研究中心的杰弗里·兰迪斯说，火星环境干燥，而且大气中缺乏氧气，这意味着那里的铁没有生锈。 |
| On Earth, any natural metallic iron rusts in our wet, oxygenated environment, so we rely on iron oxides such as haematite to make steel. Yet these oxides must be stripped of oxygen molecules in the steel-making process, which requires vast amounts of energy . |
在地球上湿润并充斥着氧气的环境中，任何天然的金属铁都会生锈。因此，我们依靠象赤铁矿中的氧化铁来制造钢材。然而，在制造钢铁的过程中，我们必须将氧化铁中的氧分子分离出来，这一过程需要大量的能量。 |
