Xinhua news－China’s Chang’e-5 probe (探测器) will get to the earth from the moon on December 17th, 2020.
On December 3rd, 2020, a Chinese spaceship, Chang’e-5 probe, took off from the surface of the moon. It carried the country’s first samples (样本) of the soil and rocks on the moon.
Chang’e-5 probe is the first Chinese spaceship to take off from a star in space except the earth. On November 24th, Chang’e-5 probe was launched from Wenchang, Hainan Province in China. It landed safely on the moon on December 1st.
The takeoff from the moon overcame a lot of difficulties, including the different environments between the earth and the moon. “But luckily, we made it.” Xing Zhuoyi, a designer of Chang’e-5 probe said excitedly. Before the takeoff, a Chinese national flag was unfolded from the probe. “Everybody in the science hall clapped their hands together warmly.” Xing said. At that time, he felt so proud of his work and his country.
Chang’e-5 is one of the most important and challenging tasks in Chinese space history. It has also been the world’s first moon-sample task in more than 40 years. If successful, the task will help improve China’s science and technology development. It will play an important part in China’s future moon landing and deep-space exploration (探索).
1. When did Chang’e-5 take off from the moon?| A．On November 24th, 2020. | B．On December 1st, 2020. |
| C．On December 3rd, 2020. | D．On December 17th, 2020. |
| A．发射 | B．接收 | C．返回 | D．运输 |
| A．In the 1970s. | B．In the 1980s. | C．In the 1990s. | D．In the 2000s. |
① Chang’e-5 probe landed safely on the moon.
② A Chinese national flag was unfolded from the probe.
③ Chang’e-5 probe took off from the surface of the moon.
④ Chang’e-5 probe was launched from Wenchang, Hainan Province.
| A．①②③④ | B．①③②④ | C．④③①② | D．④①②③ |
| A．A Story of Chang’e | B．A Great Step for China Space |
| C．A New Journey to the Earth | D．China’s Science and Technology |
A group of scientists discovered a gas called phosphine(磷化氢) on Venus(金星). That means there may be living things on the planet, which made many people start to imagine the talk between aliens and humans. A reporter from Washington Post wrote a letter to people of Earth on behalf of(代表) the citizens on Venus.
| Attention, People of Earth Fine. The big secret is out. Many of your finest scientists have discovered there is life tens of millions of miles away-here, on the beautiful planet of Venus. Congratulations! However, we have a polite request: Please stay away. We're serious. No spacecrafts to Venus, no tasks, no visits. If we wake up one morning and see so many of you people wandering around in spacesuits, we're going to be really upset. We don't want to be impolite. It's just that we're shocked by what you've got going on down there. Earth looks like a mess. You've got health problems, environmental pollution, traffic jams, political fights, etc. No wonder so many of you want to leave Earth for another planet. We know you'd like it here. That's what frightens us. you'd all move to Venus at once. If we start having you all up here, pretty soon, the Martians(火星人)and Jupiterians(木星人) are going to come, too. But we can't handle so much. Venus is not Earth 2. We suggest _______________________ because _____________________. God bless you! Sincerely, Venusians(金星人) |
1. Is it possible that there are living things on Venus according to the scientific discovery?
2. What do the Venusians ask Earth people to do?
3. How will the Venusians feel when seeing many Earth people on Venus?
4. Why do Earth people want to leave for another planet?
5. What can be filled in the blanks?
6. Who actually wrote the letter?
3 . If you watch the sky for about an hour after the sun goes down, you may see some “moving stars”. But they’re not really stars. They’re man-made satellites. And the biggest of all is the International Space Station（ISS）. From May to July is the best season to watch the ISS flying over the earth. And people can see it with their eyes.
The ISS is the biggest satellite（人造卫星）and scientists want to live on it. They think that the best way to learn more about space is to live there.
When the space station is finished, it will be like a city in space. People will stay and study there with many of the things they have at home. Laboratories, living rooms and power stations are being built. The ISS is the most expensive space program. Billions of dollars are being spent on it every year.
Scientists hope that the ISS will be a stepping stone for future space exploration（探测）. “The ISS will help us understand the human body better, explore space and study the earth. It can help us make life on the earth better,” said Kathryn Clark, an ISS scientist.
Sixteen countries are part of the program: the US, Russia, Canada, Japan, Brazil and 11 European countries. China isn’t an ISS country, but it has helped with some of the experiments. In 2003, China sent some rice up to the ISS to find out what space would do to it.
1. The International Space Station _____________.| A．is really a big city in space | B．is the biggest man-made satellite |
| C．can only help us explore space | D．is mainly built by the USA and Russia |
| A．building the ISS is only for scientists to live there |
| B．scientists can do anything they like there |
| C．people can see the Space Station at any time |
| D．sixteen countries are members of the space program |
| A．滑梯 | B．巅峰 | C．垫脚石 | D．走廊 |
| A．be used as astronauts’ food | B．sell it to aliens |
| C．do some science experiments | D．make it grow better in space |
| A．China will join the ISS in the future. |
| B．The scientists are building living rooms for them in the ISS. |
| C．The ISS will be more useful in the future. |
| D．The ISS costs the members of 16 countries plenty of money every year. |
4 . Have you ever dreamed of traveling in space? To travel in space, we first have to work out where our food will come from.
Today's space travellers don't go to the Moon or Mars. They go to the International Space Station（ISS）. There, the spacemen live for weeks to months.
If you visited the ISS years ago, nearly every kind of food you ate would have come from the Earth.
In 2014, scientists sent the ISS a space garden with some vegetable seeds（种子）. With water and some light, the vegetables in the garden grew. Those were the first foods being grown on the ISS. But the spacemen couldn't eat them and had to send them back to the Earth. The next year, after scientists made sure they were safe, the spacemen grew a second crop. This time the vegetables were ready for the spacemen to eat.
Gardening is different in space than it is on Earth. Without gravity, plants don't know which way is up. But they learn how to grow. They send their leaves in the direction of light and their roots into the soil.
The spacemen also have grown vegetables as well as flowers. It's important to know a plant can flower in space, because flowering is part of how some plants make fruit.
While the space garden is small for now, hopefully it could one day help provide people with food on long-time space trips.
1. Years ago, where did most of the food on the ISS come from?| A．The Mars. | B．The Earth. | C．The Moon. | D．The space garden. |
| A．The vegetables didn't taste good. |
| B．The spacemen didn't like vegetables. |
| C．The vegetables might not be safe to eat. |
| D．The scientists wanted to eat the vegetables first. |
| A．The spacemen. | B．The scientists. |
| C．The vegetables. | D．The water and light. |
| A．They stop growing. | B．They never grow up. |
| C．They grow in the direction of light. | D．They grow in the direction of the Earth. |
| A．a dream to travel in space. | B．plants in the space garden. |
| C．a trip to the Moon and Mars. | D．vegetable seeds from the Earth. |
Mars is an empty planet, but that could change. Someday, it might have farms where fruit and vegetables could grow.
Growing food on Mars has always seemed hard. But scientists think they have found a way to do it. They put sheets (薄膜) of material on the ground. The sheets could change the cold, dry planet into land for farming. Robin Wordsworth worked on the sheets at Harvard University in a Massachusetts. He said the sheets could let people live on another planet. On Mars, the conditions are not good, though. Most importantly, the planet is cold and dry. The soil might have polluted parts, and the air does not have much nitrogen (氮气) that plants need to grow.
The sheets do not solve all the problems. Still, they could help to set up a place for plants. The plants would grow only under the sheets. So there is less worry about harming the rest of Mars. The sheets would cover the plants.
The scientists worked with sheets about an inch thick. Those allowed light through for plants. They also warmed the ground and trapped enough heat to melt ice on Mars. Placing the sheets over icy parts of Mars could let plants alive there. Their study was printed in Nature Astronomy. The sheets could be on the ground to grow water plants and they also could be hung. That would give room to plants to grow on land below them.
Wordsworth said, "You can imagine this being used in a number of ways. It could be used for visitors to Mars. Later it could be for people who live there. However, it's a pity that the sheets are being studied in the lab."
1. The scientists made sheets ________.| A．to change the weather of Mars | B．to grow food on Mars |
| C．to get materials on the ground | D．to let people live on Mars |
| A．Making sheets an inch thick | B．Placing the sheets over icy parts |
| C．Growing many plants on the ground | D．Hanging the sheets above the land |
| A．will be sent to Mars soon | B．are still on the way |
| C．can grow foods for him to eat | D．are popular for visitors to Mars |
| A．Plants can live on Mars now | B．How do astronauts live on Mars? |
| C．Farming on Mars is coming true. | D．Ways of growing plants on the earth. |
1. What is the speech mainly about?
| A．The dreams of space travel. | B．The influence of space travel. | C．The achievements of space travel. |
| A．To show us the advantages of space travel. |
| B．To tell us the aliens we may meet in the space travel. |
| C．To remind us to be careful about space travel. |
7 . We all know that Earth only has one moon. But did you know that Earth gets to have new friends every now and then? They are called "mini-moons".
A mini-moon is also called a Temporarily Captured Object(暂时捕获的天体) , or TCO. Earth doesn't get them very often. When Earth and other objects in space get close together, Earth's gravity(重力) will pull on the objects and change their orbits(轨道) . Then the object may move around Earth for one or two years and then leave.
The newest mini-moon
In September, NASA scientists found an object coming into Earth's orbit. They named it 2020 SO, it will stay in our orbit until May 2021, according to Universe Today.
The new mini-moon could be a man-made object. Paul Chodas, a NASA scientist, believes that it could be an old rocket part from NASA's failed moon-landing mission(失败的登月任务) in 1966. Scientists will keep watching it to find out, as it'll get closer to us in November.
Previous(之前的) mini-moons
We have seen two mini-moons before. One was 2006 RH120, which moved around Earth from 2006 to 2007. The other is 2020 CD3. Scientists found it in February this year, but it left in March. Both of these mini-moons were space rocks.
1. From the second paragraph we know that ___________.| A．Earth has many mini-moons | B．mini-moons stay in Earth's orbit forever |
| C．mini-moons will leave Earth | D．mini-moons can change Earth's orbit |
| A．It might come from the moon. | B．It has orbited Earth for over 50 years. |
| C．It will enter our orbit in May 2021. | D．Scientists don't know what it is. |
| A．For 54 years. | B．For one month. | C．For one year. | D．For two years. |
| A．One. | B．Two. | C．Three. | D．Four. |
8 . Scientists think that
Scientists have launched many spaceships to
Why has no one from other planets
Maria: Great!
Kang Ping: It’s about life in space.
Maria:
Kang Ping : Yes. All the people travel by spaceship in the movie, and they can visit planets like Mars.
Maria: Really? Kang Ping,
Kang Ping: Yes. I think we will live in space one day. Houses, schools and hospitals will be built on Mars. We will be able to do anything that can be done on the earth.
Maria:
10 . The International Space Station (ISS) is the biggest satellite because scientists want to live on it. They think that the best way to learn more about space is to live there. The space shuttle discovery has taken off from the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida several times and carried a few groups of astronauts to the International Space Station.
When the space station is finished, it will be like a city in space. People will stay and study there with many of the things they have at home. Labs, living rooms and power stations are being built. The ISS is the most expensive space program ever. Millions and millions of dollars are being spent on it every year.
Scientists hope that the ISS will be a stepping stone for future space exploration. " The ISS will help us better understand the human body, explore(know more about) space and study the earth. It can help us make life on the earth better, "said Kathryn Clark, an ISS scientist. Sixteen countries are in the program: The US, Russia, Canada,Japan, Brazil and 11 European countries. China is not an ISS country, but it helped with some of the experiments. In 2003, China sent some rice up to the ISS to find out what space would do to it.
If you watch the sky for about an hour after the sun goes down, you may see the moving ISS. After it's finished, more than 90 percent of the world's population will be able to see the space station. So keep looking up, and maybe you'll see it get bigger and brighter.
1. What do the scientists think is the best way to learn more about space?| A．To watch it every day. | B．To send the satellites. | C．To live in space. | D．To fly far into space. |
| A．we can probably see the ISS when the sun goes down |
| B．some scientists from China have been to the ISS in 2013 |
| C．China is one of the members in the ISS group |
| D．the ISS is still in the space but has stopped working |
| A．供应站 | B．救济站 | C．发电站 | D．空间站 |
| A．Because they would send up most of the earth people to live there. |
| B．Because they could talk with some Chinese school students. |
| C．Because they hoped to travel to Mars and Venus some day. |
| D．Because they wanted to live in space and do better research. |
| A．The Space | B．The Space Ship | C．The Biggest Satellite | D．The Future Space Exploration |
