It is the year 2800. The moon has become the second home of humans.

Like many other people, my family live on the Moon. We live in a house like a mushroom. There is a big garden in front of the house. Some lovely rabbits live happily on the grass. Sister Change gave them to me.

There is a wonderful fruit tree in the garden. Every day, it can provide us with many kinds of fruits, such as apples, pears, peaches, bananas and cherries.

We walk by jumping because there is no gravity on the Moon. So we go to school by jumping.

During the summer holidays, most children take part in the summer camp. Our teachers take us to visit some other planets by spaceship. We communicate with the aliens in Chinese. Chinese is widely used in space.

When I miss my home town, I often come back to the Earth in a spaceship. That will be an exciting journey.

Thirteen-year-old Alyssa Carson from Louisiana wants to be the first person to go to Mars. “I want to go to Mars because nobody lives there, so I want to take that first step. It’s interesting.” she said.

Carson is the only person to have attended all three of NASA’s（美国国家航空航天局） world space camps and has been training for nine years already!

“I think that I will be able to go to Mars because I’ve trained for nine years so far. I’m interested in flying and I’m good at my work and I can do better than other people,” she said. “I don’t want anything to stop me from going to Mars,” she said in a short BBC film about her.

She may not become the first person on Mars as Mars One is hoping to build a human colony （居住地） on the Red Planet by 2023, but she still wants to go, taking the next ship. She and her father even know that if she does go to Mars, she may not return.

“In 20 years I may not ever see her again if they go to Mars and not come back, and we’ve talked about the topic. Although going to Mars is a one-way trip, her answer is always ‘Yes’.” her father said.

Many astronauts go into space. How do they live in space? Let’s find out.

A space station is a little bigger than a football field（足球场）. It is about as heavy as 450 cars. Astronauts live and work in space stations.

Astronauts use sleeping bags to sleep. They can sleep anywhere in the space station. Astronauts need a patch（眼罩）, or it’ll be too bright. There is no gravity in space. Astronauts float in the space station.

Food for astronauts is different from what we eat on the Earth. People remove（抽出）water from it. It will not take up so much room this way. Astronauts add some water and warm the food before they eat. Do astronauts use spoons or chopsticks? No, they use straws（吸管）.

Water is very precious in space. When astronauts want to clean their hands or faces, they use a wet towel with liquid（液体的）soap in it. When astronauts want to wash their hair, they use waterless shampoo（洗发精）. It does not need any water. To clean their bodies, astronauts use wet towels. The towels have body soap in them.

Mars is the fourth planet from the sun. Scientists are now watching it. And now three little spacecrafts are studying it. They are taking pictures.     36     All six are working to find the planet’s past. Did anything ever live on Mars?

No living things can live without water.     37     On September 29th, scientists had big news. One spacecraft named Phoenix found snow high in the sky on Mars.     38     And Phoenix also found ice before.     39     Scientists want to explore more later. In 2009, space scientists planned to send a larger rover called the Mars Science Laboratory.

Someday scientists hope to send a robot to get rocks and return them to Earth.     40     Can people land on Mars? No one knows. Before people land on it, machines can do the exploring work.