1 . In the universe (宇宙), as we know, there is the sun, the moon, the earth and many stars. Through our geography lessons, we know the earth goes round the sun, and the moon goes round the earth. We have day and night because the earth keeps turning all the time. When our part of the earth turns to the sun, it is day. When our part of the earth turns away from the sun, it is night.
Just because the moon is closer to the earth than the sun, it looks much bigger than the sun. Big things will look smaller when they are farther, and small things also look bigger when they are nearer,
The sun is bright enough to give out very strong light. The moon can’t give out any light at all, but it looks quite bright too. Why? In fact, the light from the moon comes from the sun. The moon looks much bigger and brighter than the stars. But actually (事实上) the stars are much bigger and brighter than the moon. They look smaller than the moon also because they are farther away from the earth.
There are still many other planets (行星) in the universe. All of them move round the sun. But of all these planets, only on the earth there are living things and people can only live on the earth too. At 9:00 a.m., on October 15th 2003, Chinese pilot (飞行员) Yang Liwei was sent up to space. He stayed there for 21 hours. It was the first time for Chinese to get into space.
1. We find the sun ______ than the moon because it is ______ to us.| A．bigger; farther | B．smaller; closer |
| C．bigger; closer | D．smaller; farther |
| A．night | B．day | C．evening | D．Sunday |
| A．On November 15th, 2002. | B．On October 16th, 2003. |
| C．On May 5th, 2004. | D．On October 15th, 2003. |
| A．The moon goes round the earth, and it can’t give out any light at all. |
| B．The moon goes round the sun, and its light is from the sun. |
| C．The sun goes round the earth. |
| D．Only the earth goes round the sun. |
It often takes astronauts days to go to the moon. But will people live there? Will people
Some people think it is
Who will go to the moon? Maybe
Will it
| A．draw | B．build | C．pollute | D．share |
| A．difficult | B．boring | C．meaningless | D．possible |
| A．Food | B．Houses | C．Air | D．Clothes |
| A．find | B．eat | C．grow | D．sell |
| A．or | B．if | C．because | D．but |
| A．come from | B．look like | C．get to | D．think about |
| A．writers | B．workers | C．scientists | D．doctors |
| A．animals | B．stars | C．sea | D．mountains |
| A．seriously | B．luckily | C．probably | D．cheaply |
| A．reach | B．expect | C．play | D．happen |
A team of scientists are carrying out a project at the University of Greenwich in London. They are trying to find ways to make food on Mars in the future. The project is called Feeding Mars. It tries to use water, fish and fish waste to grow fruit and vegetables on Mars.
It would take at least 21 months to reach Mars, learn about its surface and return to Earth. So it would be a big help if the spacemen could grow fresh food on Mars itself. However, farming on Mars will be very hard. There’s a lot of water that could be taken from ice just below the surface, but the land on Mars is short of the nutrients that living things need. The team says that they could solve the problem by growing plants and fish together. Fish waste can then be used to provide nutrients for plants.
“It is expected that you can grow lots of food, such as vegetables, tea and medicinal plants on Mars,” said Dr. Benz Kotzen, who leads the project. “You can even harvest fish for food then.”
1. The project tries to use water and fish to grow fruit on the moon.2. The project would take at least 21 months to return to Mars.
3. The poor land condition makes it difficult to farm on Mars.
4. Scientists could grow plants and fish together to solve the nutrients’ problem.
5. Dr. Benz Kotzen was disappointed about this project.
Scientists have worked out when our Sun will die. It won’t be any time soon. It will be in 10 billion years. The scientists are from the University of Manchester in the UK. They predict that in about 5 billion years from now, the Sun will turn into a “red giant”. This is the scientific name given to a star at the end of its life. When our Sun becomes a red giant, its centre will shrink (收缩) . Its outer layers will expand (膨胀) as far as Mars. This means Earth will be burnt and disappear. After our Sun turns into a red giant, it will become a bubble of gas and space dust. The scientists say no humans will be on Earth when the Sun dies out.
The Sun is still quite young in space years. It is just 4.6 billion years old. This means it is only around one third into its lifespan (寿命) . Professor Albert Zijlstra, a scientist from the University of Manchester, explained what happens at the end of a star’s life. He said, “By this point in the star’s life, it is running out of fuel. Then it turns off and dies.” Professor Zijlstra was happy that modern science can count the age of stars and what will happen to them. “We even have found out what the Sun will do when it dies.” He said.
1. According to the scientists, when will the sun die?2. When do we call a star “red giant”?
3. What will happen to humans when the sun dies out?
4. What’s the lifespan of the Sun?
5. Should we worry about the sun’s death? Why or why not?
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 ✧ ESA plans to use ClearSpace-1, a ✧ The space junk travels so ✧ In the new space cleaning plan, a spaceship is used to ✧ Although the |
6 . Have you ever seen the day begin? The dark sky starts to look brighter. Then suddenly the sky is all pink and red and gold even a little green. The earth has turned bright until the sun is shining on the place where you are. This is what makes it day.
The sun is always shining, but it can only shine on one side of the earth at a time. It can’t light the side that is away from it. When the sun is shining on the other side of the world, it is night where you are. At night, you can see the stars.
All day the stars are in the sky, but the light from the sun is so bright that you can’t see them. When the sun is gone, the stars are bright enough to see. Stars look as tiny as pinheads (针头), but some are even bigger than the sun. Big things look little when they are far away. In the sky, planes look like toys, but on the ground you can see that they are big. Stars are millions of times bigger than planes. They look very small because they are so far away. The sun is closer than the other stars. So it looks bigger.
1. We can’t see the stars in the sky because ________.| A．it’s dark | B．when the sun is gone |
| C．the light from the sun is not bright | D．the light from the sun is so bright |
| A．when they are far away | B．when they are close to us |
| C．when the sun is too bright | D．when the sun is gone |
| A．Farther than the others. | B．Closer than the others. |
| C．Bigger than the others. | D．Brighter than the others. |
| A．it is bright | B．it is darker | C．it looks brighter | D．it is night |
| nearest, learn, Thanks, includes, far, seen, receiving, smaller, Thanks to, |
The universe (宇宙) is so wide that we still don’t know much about it. It
Our knowledge of the universe has been growing all the time.
8 . Do you know what will happen in a weightless environment? Students attend a science lesson given by astronauts on board China’s Tiangong space station on Wednesday, March 23, 2022. Zhai Zhigang, Wang Yaping and Ye Guangfu, the members of the Shenzhou XIII, which was launched (发射) on October 16, appear on television screens watched by millions of students across China.
During the 41-minute lesson, the astronauts did four experiments to show physical phenomena (现象) only possible in a weightless environment, such as “liquid crystallization” and “a water bridge”. In one experiment, Wang used a toy of Bing Dwen Dwen, the mascot of the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games, to show how objects fly in Tiangong. They invited the young viewers to do similar experiments to see the differences between space and land environments.
Before closing the lesson, the astronauts answered questions from students. The questions covered the life and work in space, such as how to take care of the skin and whether hot water was available. Wednesday’s event marked the third time Wang had taken part in a space lesson. In June 2013, she gave the nation’s first space lesson to over 60 million Chinese students in Shenzhou X. It made China the second country, following the United States, to have given a lesson to schoolchildren from space.
In early December, Wang gave the country’s second space lesson from the Tiangong station. The astronauts showed viewers how they lived and worked inside the space station.
“These science lessons can encourage students to explore the world of science and technology.” Shi Yi, a physics teacher, said after today’s activity, “Encouraged by China’s spaceflight achievements, my school has built a space science laboratory and the teachers give lessons about space exploration.”
根据材料内容选择最佳答案。
1. On March 23, 2022, the astronauts finished these tasks EXCEPT ________.
| A．answering the questions from students |
| B．inviting the students to do experiments |
| C．doing an experiment about “a water bridge” |
| D．showing how they lived inside the space station |
| A．In June 2013. | B．In October 2021. |
| C．In December 2021. | D．In March 2022. |
| A．The astronauts did four experiments during the lesson. |
| B．Over 60 million students across China attended the lesson. |
| C．China is the second country to have given a lesson in space. |
| D．The three science lessons given by astronauts are rather meaningful. |
(①=paragraph 1 ②=paragraph 2,…)
| A．①/②③/④⑤ | B．①②/③/④ | C．①/②③④/ | D．①②③/④/⑤ |
| A．A science novel. | B．A news report. | C．A fairy tale. | D．An interview. |
9 . Do you want to celebrate your birthday in space? It would be very different from what you might do on earth.
Some astronauts feel sick for the first few days in space. Some feel as if they have a cold all the time. That’s because without gravity, the fluids (液体) in their bodies move towards their heads. Their faces look a little fatter.
And because gravity is not pressing on the spine (脊椎). The spine relaxes and stretches (舒展).
Since nothing has weight, astronauts can lift heavy objects easily.
| A．They can even lift each other. |
| B．For example, your birthday cake would be flying. |
| C．Astronauts grow three or four centimeters in space. |
| D．Your friends could still sing Happy Birthday to You. |
| E．For the same reason, their waists get smaller and their chests get bigger. |
What do black holes look like? We finally got the answer: they look like dark circles with a bright ring around the outside. Scientists took the world’s first photo of a black hole. The black hole is very far from Earth—about 55 million light years away. This is not the only black hole in the universe.
Black holes are mysterious in the universe. A photo can help us learn more about them. How much do you know about black holes? Try to answer the following questions.
Q: What is a black hole?
A: A black hole comes from a dying star. The star turns in to a small point. The point has much mass and strong gravity (引力) . The strong gravity of a black hole pulls things. The black hole “eats” these things. Black holes can even “eat” light. That’s why a black hole looks “black”.
Q: If black holes are “black”, how do scientists know they are there?
A: We cannot see black holes. But we can see how their strong gravity works on the things around them. A black hole’s gravity pulls dust and gas into it. And if a star is orbiting (绕轨道运行) a point in space, scientists can study the star’s orbit. They can tell if the star is orbiting a black hole.
Q: How did scientists take the picture of the black hole?
A: Scientists didn’t use a camera to take the picture. They used eight radio telescopes in different places across the world. The telescopes got information from the black hole. Scientists used computers to deal with the information. It took them two years to get the final picture.
Q: Will the sun turn into a black hole? And if it does, will it “eat” Earth?
A: The sun won’t become a black hole. According to NASA, it does not have enough mass to turn into one. When the sun dies, it will become a smaller and cooler star. Even if the sun becomes a black hole, Earth would still be safe.
1. Which of the following is NOT true about black holes?| A．They are about 55 million light years away from Earth. |
| B．Black holes look “black” because they pull light and “eat” it. |
| C．There is more than one black hole in space. |
| A．moves | B．shakes | C．feels |
| A．using cameras to take pictures |
| B．using radio telescopes around the world |
| C．watching the stars carefully in the sky |
| A．Earth will die at once. | B．Earth will become black. | C．Earth will still be safe. |
| A．Learning about black holes | B．Earth and the black holes | C．Something about the universe |
