3 .

There are actually many planets that are outside of our solar system. The first of these far-off planets was discovered in 1988. So far, astronomers have found more than 3,500 such planets, and they think there are a lot more. Astronomers have found many of them using a special space telescope. This telescope can see very far into space. Many of these planets go around their own star, like our planet goes around the sun. A few of these planets even go around two stars. However, some of these planets are by themselves and do not go around a star. Astronomers cannot see these planets with their eyes. Instead, they use some special methods to find out where the planets are and what they are like.

Even though these planets are very far away from us, we know some things about the planets. We know that they come in all kinds of colors and sizes. Some of the planets appear to be red or blue, and they can be much bigger than Jupiter (木星). Some of these planets also seem to be made of the same kinds of things as can be found on Earth. A number of the far-off planets seem to be completely solid and made of rocks, they are hotter than Jupiter, too.

While far-off planets are interesting, there is an important reason why astronomers are looking at them. Astronomers want to find a planet like Earth. They think that there may be some out there that have air and water like Earth. Such planets, astronomers believe, may also support life on them. That would certainly be something to find! So astronomers keep searching. Who knows what they will find out there?

1. The underlined word “them” in Paragraph 1 refers to ________.

A．telescopes

B．planets

C．astronomers

D．stars

2. How does the writer explain the underlined sentence in Paragraph 2?

A．By giving examples.

B．By listing numbers.

C．By using old sayings.

D．By telling stories.

3. What’s the writer’s attitude towards “keep searching for new planets”?

A．Supportive.

B．Doubtful.

C．Uncaring.

D．Unclear.

4. Which is the best title for the text?

A．Far-off Planets: Our New Home

B．Welcome to Far-off Planets

C．An Eye on Far-off Planets

D．Discoveries on Far-off Planets

4 . 阅读下面短文并完成下方的题目。

When we look up at the night sky, we see the twinkling stars. But what we don’t see is the space junk (垃圾) floating up the space. Now there may be as many as 170 million pieces of space junk in Earth’s orbit (轨道). If they hit our satellites or spaceships, they can destroy them and make them stop working.

Facing the big danger by space junk, scientists are working hard on its cleanup although it’s really a tough job and takes a long time. The European Space Agency (ESA) plans to use a “junk truck”, ClearSpace-1, in 2025. It’s a spaceship that can find its target and move close to it, then catch it with its four “arms”. This is not going to be an easy job because even the smallest junk circles Earth as fast as 8 kilometers a second. Once it catches the junk, the spaceship will carry it back to Earth. This is because the junk will burn up when traveling through the atmosphere (大气层), so there won’t be much left when it reaches Earth. However, the spaceship itself will burn up at the same time.

Since the original cleanup plan will cause huge loss, scientists are trying to work out other plans. One new plan is to send a spaceship carrying special tools, which are used to shoot to stick into the space junk, moving it away from the orbit and throwing it into Earth’s atmosphere.

Space junk is a huge threat which endangers our satellites or spaceships, but why haven’t space agencies around the world done anything yet? One reason is the cost. To catch one piece of space junk larger than 10cm wide would cost between $4,000 and $60,000 (about 30,000 to 436,000 yuan) per kilogram.

With space traffic increasing, all nations have to work together to find out more ways to reduce space junk, or there will be more in-space accidents.

阅读短文，根据短文内容完成填空。（每空限填一词）

SOME INFORMATION ABOUT SPACE CLEANING PLAN: ✧   Scientists are trying to work out space cleaning plans because space junk is     1     to satellites and spaceships. ✧   ESA plans to use ClearSpace-1, a     2    , to clean up pieces of space junk by catching them and taking them to Earth’s atmosphere. ✧   The space junk travels so     3     that it’s difficult for ClearSpace-1 to catch it. ✧   In the new space cleaning plan, a spaceship is used to     4     the space junk into Earth’s atmosphere but not to carry it there. ✧   Although the     5     of space cleanup is very high, it is something that all nations must do.

6 . Many people are interested in finding out what will happen to them in the future. For thousands of years, some people have used horoscopes（星象）for this purpose. Today, a great number of people still regard horoscopes as a way to learn what will happen to them. Some believe that their star signs（星座）can also tell a lot about a person’s personality.

Each star sign has good and bad qualities. For example, the star sign of the people who are born in late October and early November is Scorpio（天蝎座）. These people may often argue with others because they usually stick to their own minds. On the other hand, Scorpios are usually very honest and good at keeping secrets, which makes them good friends. In some countries, people even check their lovers’ star signs before they decide to get married. It is said that some star signs match well, while some do not.

However, not everyone believes in horoscopes or star signs. Many people object, because they think that star signs can’t tell them everything about a person. After all, not everyone fits their star sign. We probably all know some Scorpios who are open-minded, no matter what their star sign says. Whether you believe in horoscopes or not is up to you. However, learn about it in your free time and you may discover something new about yourself!

1. What can we learn from Paragraph 1?

A．Horoscopes have been studied for a long time.

B．Horoscopes have been popular among all people.

C．Many people study horoscopes at an early age.

D．Horoscopes can tell a lot about a person’s personality exactly.

2. According to star signs, what will a Scorpio most likely do?

A．Only stay alone.

B．Tell their friends a lie.

C．Be kind and easy-going to everyone.

D．Not change their minds easily.

3. The underlined word “object” probably means ________ in English.

A．support

B．worry

C．disagree

D．promise

4. What’s the best title for the passage?

A．The History of Horoscopes

B．Another Way to Learn about Yourself

C．Interesting Facts about Star Signs

D．A Science That Studies the Past

7 . 阅读下面短文，按照句子结构的语法性和上下文连贯的要求，在空白处填入一个适当的词或用括号中词语的正确形式填空。

We see the sun every day. If it is     1    （sun）, we can see the moon at night, too. The moon is near us. So far astronauts     2    （visit） the moon several times. The moon is almost     3     nearest satellite（卫星） to the earth in space.

Light     4    （travel）at 300,000 kilometers a second. Light reaches us from the moon in less than a second and a half. The moon is about 382,000 kilometers away.

Light from the sun arrives in the earth in about 8.5     5    （minute）. The sun is about 149,640,000 kilometers away     6     the earth. Other stars are much     7    （far） away than the sun. Light from the nearest star reaches     8    （we）in about four years. When you look at a star, it is very small.     9     in fact many of them are much bigger than the sun. They look small only because they are     10    （real） far away.

8 . When we talk about the universe, we mean not only the earth, the sun and the moon, but also the stars and space between them. There are millions of stars in our sky. The sun is one of them. Around it there are eight big planets moving, including the earth. The moon is our nearest neighbour in space. If you look at the sky on a clear night, it is possible to see about 3,000 stars. They look small, but they are really very big hot balls of burning(燃烧着的) gas. Some of them are huge, but others are much smaller like our planet Earth. The biggest stars are very bright, but they can only live for a short time. Every day new stars are born and old stars die.

All the stars are very far away. The light from the nearest star (except the sun) takes more than four years to reach the earth.

Hundreds of years ago, people used stars, like the North Star, to know which direction(方向) to travel in. Today you can still see that star.

1. The universe means ________.

A．the earth	B．the sun, the moon and the stars
C．space between the stars	D．All of the above.

2. The light from the nearest star (except the sun) takes more than ________ to get to the earth.

A．four years

B．1,000 days

C．100 years

D．four light years

3. People used to look at the North Star ________.

A．when they were working	B．to tell them when to do farm work
C．while they were travelling	D．just for fun

9 . Mars is a neighboring planet in our solar system. Scientists study Mars because it could hold clues that could help us learn more about life on Earth. For decades, scientists have used robot technology to better understand Mars. In December 2020, scientists introduced a group of robots named Mars Dogs at a yearly meeting.

The Mars Dog is a four-legged robot created by the company Boston Dynamics. It, along with other similar robots, can move around in ways the wheeled rovers (探测器) that explored the planet never could. Traditional Mars rovers are limited mostly to flat surfaces. However, many scientifically interesting Martian regions are only reachable by crossing very rough (崎岖的) ground or going below ground. Walking Mars Dogs are well-suited for such challenges—even if they fall down, they can get back up again. These robots can also explore underground by walking around rocks and lowering themselves into caves. They are even capable of selecting which path to take. While they do this, they collect measurements to build a map of what they see.

A Mars Dog would also be about 12 times lighter than present rovers. It would be able to travel much faster, reaching normal walking speeds of 5 kilometers per hour during tests. Compare that to the Curiosity rover that is presently exploring Mars. Curiosity rolls along the Martian surface at about 0.14 kilometers per hour.

Before going to Mars, the team members are testing the robot. They even take the robot to outdoor locations similar to Martian landscapes. Those tests show that the robots, without any help, can walk around rocks and map deep caves. “These behaviors could one day enable significant scientific missions to take place on the Martian surface and subsurface,” the scientists said at the yearly meeting.

1. What is the text mainly about?

A．Ways robot dogs walk on the Martian surface.

B．Robot dogs newly created for Mars exploration.

C．Differences between the Mars Dog and Curiosity.

D．Studies of Mars with the help of robot technology.

2. What advantage do Mars Dogs have according to paragraph 2?

A．They are much lighter.	B．They travel much faster.
C．They are better at seeking shelter (避难所).	D．They move around more flexibly (灵活) .

3. What is scientists’ attitude to the future of Mars Dogs?

A．Concerned.

B．Doubtful.

C．Hopeful.

D．Uncertain.

10 .

Our Milky Way Galaxy may be home to 2 billion planets that have the right conditions to support life. These planets have the correct temperature for liquid water. While no one knows what alien life would look like, if it is anything like life on earth, it would need water to keep alive. According to the research, there are nearly 2 billion habitable planets in the Milky Way Galaxy, which is just one of 100 to 200 billion galaxies in the universe.

The earth was formed 9 billion years after the Big Bang. Many of the planets in the Milky Way were formed millions and some even billions of years before the earth. If intelligent life had existed on any of these planets, they would be much more developed than humans. With that much time to develop the technology for space travel, we should have been visited by aliens many times.

So where is everyone? Some people believe that aliens have visited earth many times, and some governments of the world might have known very well. some believe that we have also been visited many times in the ancient past. They point to the Egyptian pyramids or the huge heads of Easter Island. They say that there was no way that ancient humans were able to create these structures without alien assistance.

According to Harvard professor Avi Loeb,        . For example, in 2017, a cigar-shaped object came within 33 million km of the earth as it passed through our solar system. It was named Oumuamua, which means “messenger from the distant past reaching out to us” in Hawaiian. Loeb says that its unusual shape and the fact that it sped up as it left our solar system sets it apart from anything else we’ve seen. He thinks it was a probe sent by an alien civilization. Jackie Fairey, says everyone should have reservation about this. She is one of many scientists who say there are more reasonable explanations for Oumuamua. That hasn’t stopped Professor Loeb. He has written a new book on Oumuamua called Extraterrestrial: The First Sign of Intelligent Life Beyond Earth.

1. According to the passage, if there were aliens, they ________.

A．could be similar to humans on the earth

B．must help build the Great Wall

C．would be smarter than humans on the earth

D．have a shorter history than humans

2. Which of the following can be put into the blank ________ in the passage?

A．we hasn’t been visited by aliens for we got nothing from the universe

B．we not only have been visited by aliens, but also have evidence

C．no one could be sure about whether the evidence we’ve got is true

D．all of researchers doubt about the fact that we have been visited

3. From the passage, we can infer that ________.

A．there are fewer than 100 billion habitable planets in the universe

B．some aliens did actually, and on the earth in ancient times

C．some governments received information from the oumuamua

D．scientists Leob doesn’t agree with the idea that Fairey holds

4. What’s the best title of the passage?

A．Where are all the aliens?

B．When will the aliens visit us?

C．Oumuamua: Have you ever been here?

D．How many habitable planets are there?