SpaceX last Saturday launched a shipment of supplies for the astronauts living at the International Space Station (ISS), carrying for the first time an experiment independently designed by China.

上周六，美国太空探索技术公司为生活在国际空间站的航天员发送了一批补给，首次携带了由中国自主设计的实验项目。

The SpaceX Dragon cargo¹ spacecraft² lifted off on the Falcon³ 9 rocket at 5:07 pm from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

当天下午5时7分，该公司的“龙”货运飞船搭载“猎鹰9”火箭从佛罗里达州肯尼迪航空中心升空。

Among the cargo is a 3.5 kg device from the Beijing Institute of Technology that sought to answer questions like "Does the space radiation and microgravity cause mutations among antibody-encoding genes⁴ and how does it happen?"

飞船携带的货物中有一个来自北京理工大学、重3.5公斤的装置。该装置试图回答“太空辐射和微重力是否会导致抗体编码基因的突变以及它是如何发生的？”等问题。

The Chinese payload was first reported in 2015, when an agreement was reached between the institute and NanoRacks, a Houston-based company that offers services for the commercial utilization⁵ of the space station.

2015年，北京理工大学与纳诺拉克斯公司达成协议，这个中国载荷首次被报道。纳诺拉克斯公司总部位于休斯顿，是一家提供国际空间站商业利用服务的企业。

Under the agreement, NanoRacks will deliver the device to the US side of the space station and astronauts there will conduct studies using the device in about two weeks, data from which will be sent back to the Chinese researchers.

根据协议，纳诺拉克斯将把该装置交付至空间站的美国部分，那里的航天员将使用该装置进行约两周的研究，研究所获数据将回传给中国研究人员。

NASA spokesperson Kathryn Hambleton confirmed to Xinhua that there is a Chinese experiment that is launched on this mission.

NASA发言人凯瑟琳·汉布尔顿已向新华社证实，有一个中国的实验项目在此次发射任务中启动。

"NASA complied with all legal requirements to notify the Congress of this activity, and all of the ISS partners approved the inclusion of the experiment," Hambleton said in an email.

汉布尔顿在一则邮件中表示：“NASA在遵守所有法律要求的前提下向国会告知这了一活动，并且已经取得了所有国际空间站合作伙伴就该实验的批准。”