为何间谍卫星难以帮助寻找MH370

After months of revelations by Edward Snowden about the extent of global surveillance by western security services, it has come as a shock to those pondering the fate of the missing Malaysian airliner that the extensive network of spy satellites in orbit have failed to locate the jet.

就在几个月前，爱德华•斯诺登(Edward Snowden)才揭露过西方安全部门对全球的大规模监控，而眼下，间谍卫星的庞大网络却无法定位一架飞机。这让那些牵挂失联马航客机命运的人感到震惊。

After a week of fruitless searching by more than 100 ships and aircraft, the challenge is becoming more daunting as the hunt switches to an ever larger part of the globe.

一周以来，出动搜寻的船只和飞机数量过百，但未取得任何结果。如今搜寻转向面积更大的区域，令挑战难度更大。

Expectations that the answer to the mystery would come from space were raised last week, when it emerged that data from commercial communications satellites, operated by London-based Inmarsat, had provided clues after military radar lost track of the Boeing 777 as it headed west over the Indian Ocean.

军用雷达在探测到这架波音777客机向西飞往印度洋后，就失去了它的信号。而上周，位于伦敦的国际海事卫星组织(Inmarsat)表示，其商用通信卫星的数据为客机在那之后的位置提供了新的线索，让人们产生了新的期待，希望卫星数据或能解开失联客机位置的谜题。

But since then it is clear investigators are no closer to finding the aircraft. The Inmarsat satellites were not designed to track the aircraft and only picked up “routine, automated signals”. Similarly, military satellites are not designed to track stray commercial airliners. US intelligence has little raw data of its own from the likely flight path of the aircraft, US defence officials have said. US spy satellites in the Indian Ocean and Pacific Ocean areas are focused mainly on monitoring North Korea and Afghanistan and northern Pakistan.

但自那以后，很显然，调查人员并没有向着找到飞机更近一步。国际海事卫星组织的卫星并不是为追踪飞机而设计的，只会接收“常规的自动信号”。军事卫星同样不是为追踪迷途商用客机而设计的。美国国防部门官员表示，关于失联客机的可能航迹，美国情报部门也没有多少自己的原始数据。美国在印度洋和太平洋地区上空的间谍卫星主要用于监测朝鲜、阿富汗和巴基斯坦北部。

Increasingly, the US has also been devoting more resources to tracking Chinese activities in the East China Sea and South China Sea, but US intelligence agencies do not routinely monitor large, empty swaths of the Indian Ocean.

美国也已开始在追踪中国在东海和南海的活动上，投入更多资源，但美国情报机构并未对印度洋大片空无一物的海域实施常规监视。

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency, a US defence department agency that both collects and analyses satellite information as well as other types of imagery, is helping with the search for the 777 in the Indian Ocean. But the main search is being carried out by highly advanced long-range maritime surveillance aircraft, as well as helicopters that can fly shorter missions from a destroyer currently in the Andaman Sea.

美国国防部旗下的国家地理空间情报局(National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency)正协助在印度洋的搜寻活动。该局一直搜集和分析卫星数据以及其他类型的图像。但搜索工作主要还是由非常先进的长距离海上侦察机以及直升机完成。直升机能从目前停留在安达曼海的驱逐舰上起飞、以执行中短程任务。

Even if spy satellites were deployed, Pentagon officials have hinted for the past few days that there are few technological fixes that can help the search. Assuming the aircraft has crashed into the Indian Ocean, it would be a case of trying to locate small pieces of debris that might be afloat. The bigger debris is likely to have sunk.

即便部署了间谍卫星，美国五角大楼官员在过去几天一直暗示，可用来帮助搜索的技术手段不多。假如飞机已坠入印度洋，那意味着要用卫星来定位可能浮在海面的残骸碎片。较大的飞机残骸很可能已沉入海底。

So the task of searching the Indian Ocean is unlikely to get any help from space. The task is even more daunting given the depth of the water.

因此，在印度洋上的搜索工作不太可能从太空得到任何帮助。而考虑到这片海域的深度，搜救任务变得更加严峻。

As Mike Rogers, Republican head of the House intelligence committee, said: “You have a whole new window of this investigation about to open and it may lead to the biggest dead end of all, that the plane is at the bottom of the Indian Ocean.”

正如众议院情报委员会(House Intelligence Committee)主席、共和党人迈克•罗杰斯(Mike Rogers)所说：“你以为这场调查即将打开一扇崭新的窗口，结果它可能将我们引入一条最大的死胡同，那就是这架飞机可能已经沉入印度洋底。”