爲何間諜衛星難以幫助尋找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.

就在幾個月前，愛德華•斯諾登(Edward Snowden)才揭露過西方安全部門對全球的大規模監控，而眼下，間諜衛星的龐大網絡卻無法定位一架飛機。這讓那些牽掛失聯馬航客機命運的人感到震驚。

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.

一週以來，出動搜尋的船隻和飛機數量過百，但未取得任何結果。如今搜尋轉向面積更大的區域，令挑戰難度更大。

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.

軍用雷達在探測到這架波音777客機向西飛往印度洋後，就失去了它的信號。而上週，位於倫敦的國際海事衛星組織(Inmarsat)表示，其商用通信衛星的數據爲客機在那之後的位置提供了新的線索，讓人們產生了新的期待，希望衛星數據或能解開失聯客機位置的謎題。

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.

但自那以後，很顯然，調查人員並沒有向着找到飛機更近一步。國際海事衛星組織的衛星並不是爲追蹤飛機而設計的，只會接收“常規的自動信號”。軍事衛星同樣不是爲追蹤迷途商用客機而設計的。美國國防部門官員表示，關於失聯客機的可能航跡，美國情報部門也沒有多少自己的原始數據。美國在印度洋和太平洋地區上空的間諜衛星主要用於監測朝鮮、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.

美國也已開始在追蹤中國在東海和南海的活動上，投入更多資源，但美國情報機構並未對印度洋大片空無一物的海域實施常規監視。

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.

美國國防部旗下的國家地理空間情報局(National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency)正協助在印度洋的搜尋活動。該局一直蒐集和分析衛星數據以及其他類型的圖像。但搜索工作主要還是由非常先進的長距離海上偵察機以及直升機完成。直升機能從目前停留在安達曼海的驅逐艦上起飛、以執行中短程任務。

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.

即便部署了間諜衛星，美國五角大樓官員在過去幾天一直暗示，可用來幫助搜索的技術手段不多。假如飛機已墜入印度洋，那意味着要用衛星來定位可能浮在海面的殘骸碎片。較大的飛機殘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從太空得到任何幫助。而考慮到這片海域的深度，搜救任務變得更加嚴峻。

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.”

正如衆議院情報委員會(House Intelligence Committee)主席、共和黨人邁克•羅傑斯(Mike Rogers)所說：“你以爲這場調查即將打開一扇嶄新的窗口，結果它可能將我們引入一條最大的死衚衕，那就是這架飛機可能已經沉入印度洋底。”