1 . The Federal Communications Commission of the US recently issued the first-ever fine for space junk, against the Dish Network. The satellite television company failed to properly deal with one of its satellites, leaving it at a lower orbit than it promised when securing its license.
Some space junk was discarded during missions — maybe an astronaut dropped his lucky penny, or released an instrument’s camera cover after it was no longer needed. Other junk, however, is the result of collisions: Even that lucky penny, traveling at 15 times the speed of a bullet, can cause huge damage — ending a satellite’s mission or, worse, breaking that satellite into pieces.
That’s obviously bad news for satellites. The solution isn’t to demand the launch of fewer satellites; these bring real benefits to people on the Earth.
And while traffic management is certainly necessary, pieces of garbage are never going to be able to follow even the most sensible rules of the orbital road. That means two things need to happen: People need to stop littering, and they need to take out some trash.
The professionals, unsurprisingly, have more carefully considered names for these processes — mitigation (减轻) and remediation (补救). Any time a company wants to put a satellite in the sky, it should have a clear plan for the instrument’s end of life. For objects in very high geostationary orbit (地球同步轨道), this usually involves sending the item to the out-of-the-way “graveyard” orbit. For objects lower down, it tends instead to involve moving them lower still, so that they will bum up upon reentering the atmosphere.
Active removal of garbage that has failed to get out of the way is technically tricky, but at least for large objects, remediation is possible.
Encouragingly, some countries are beginning to try. No nation, however, can save space on its own. A global convention (协定) to set a 21st-century code of conduct for space is in order.
1. What does the underlined word “discarded” in paragraph 2 mean?| A．Collected up. | B．Thrown away. |
| C．Produced. | D．Ignored. |
| A．The satellites benefit our life a lot. |
| B．We need new satellites to replace old ones. |
| C．Countries are using satellites to occupy space. |
| D．We must make a deeper exploration into the universe. |
① Sending satellites to the “graveyard” orbit.
② Moving objects lower still.
③ Active removal of debris.
| A．①② | B．②③ | C．①③ | D．①②③ |
| A．To provide solutions to space junk. |
| B．To explain the damage of space junk. |
| C．To call upon countries to fine companies making space junk. |
| D．To appeal to nations for the protection off space environment. |
| A．Robots never go wrong. | B．Robots can talk to people. | C．They can have more free time. |
3 . How has artificial intelligence (AI) changed and shaped our world over the last five years? How will AI continue to impact our lives in the coming years? Those are the questions addressed in my report.
When it comes to the current state of AI, I must say some of the biggest changes in the last five years have been how well AI performs in large data systems on specific types of tasks. We’ve seen Alpha Zero become the best Go player entirely through self-play, and everyday use of AI such as grammar checks and auto complete, automatic personal photo organization, and speech recognition become commonplace for large numbers of people.
In terms of potential, I’m most excited that AI can develop better and be used to assist people in various ways. It can help with decision-making such as identifying the likely treatment options for patients and provide basic assistance such as text-to-speech transformation for the visually damaged. In many situations, people and AI are complementary; that’s why I assume there is a possibility of teaming people with AI.
In the past, people had a fairly rosy outlook on AI, but now the public have a much more mixed view. This comes from the fact we are much less willing to tolerate faults, especially discriminatory ones. There have also been questions of information and disinformation control as people get their news and entertainment by searches and rankings personalized to their needs. So, there’s a much greater recognition that we should not be waiting for AI tools to become mainstream before making sure they are morally correct.
The need to understand the basics of AI and data science starts much earlier than college education, as children are being exposed to AI as soon as they click on online videos. But for computer science students in college, I think a key thing that future engineers need to realize is when to demand input and how to talk across subject boundaries to get at often difficult-to-quantify ideas of safety, equity, and so forth.
1. Why does the author talk about AI’s performance on some tasks in paragraph 2?| A．To criticize AI’s lack of diversity. | B．To show AI’s specialized advancements. |
| C．To explain AI’s superiority to humans. | D．To highlight AI’s considerable intelligence. |
| A．Significant. | B．Independent. | C．Interrelated. | D．Contradictory. |
| A．Its disadvantages. | B．Its moral duty. |
| C．The high expectations. | D．The personalized news. |
| A．Strengths and Faults of AI | B．The Present and Future of AI |
| C．AI: How to Further Develop? | D．Humans vs AI: Who’s Better? |
1. Where does the woman usually watch the 2022 Winter Olympics?
| A．On her cellphone. | B．On TV. | C．On the computer. |
| A．It can be the best in history. |
| B．It’s widely watched in the US. |
| C．It promotes streaming services. |
| A．Figure skating. | B．Freestyle skiing. | C．Ice hockey. |
| A．The possible existence of life on other planets. |
| B．Methods for building powerful new telescopes. |
| C．A technical problem that astronomers can’t solve |
| D．The discovery of planets orbiting distant stars. |
| A．They studied variations in the appearance of the parent stars. |
| B．They were able to see the planets with a telescope. |
| C．They compared the parent stars to the Sun. |
| D．They sent astronauts on a mission into space |
| A．Their surface features. | B．Their chemical composition. |
| C．Their temperature. | D．Their age. |
| A．All the stars are orbited by their own planets. |
| B．We currently have a telescope that can be used to see other planets |
| C．By a very direct method, the astronomers measured subtle distortions. |
| D．By a very indirect method, the astronomers measured subtle distortions. |
1. Why is Shakespeare-style writing mentioned in the conversation?
| A．To introduce a new game. |
| B．To advocate a famous writing style. |
| C．To indicate ChatGPT’s advanced function. |
| A．A chatbot | B．A search engine. | C．A tech company |
| A．Conservative. | B．Optimistic. | C．Critical. |
| A．Avoiding heavy reliance on AI. |
| B．Developing our innovative ability. |
| C．Being adaptive and using AI fully. |
目前，地球上能供养人类的资源有限，一些资源甚至正在耗尽。例如，地球上的氧气越来越少了。因此，一些人认为人类应该花更多的时间和金钱来探索太空和宇宙的秘密。太空探索直接产生了许多卫星和其他高端产品。根据卫星返回地球的数据和天气模式，科学家可以通过分析做出准确的天气预报。探索太空是浪费时间和金钱的论点是很肤浅的。最后，应该继续进行太空探索。
Currently, there are
1. Why did Jared Isaacman start the Inspiration 4 mission?
| A．To raise funds. | B．To do research. | C．To realize his dream. |
| A．She had cancer at 29. |
| B．She was chosen as a NASA astronaut in 2009. |
| C．She is the youngest American in space. |
| A．He’s a doctor. | B．He’s a teacher. | C．He’s an astronaut. |
| A．93 miles above the Earth. | B．360 miles above the Earth. | C．575 miles above the Earth. |
1. Who first traveled around the moon before human beings?
| A．Dogs.. | B．Monkeys.. | C．Tortoises. |
| A．To see how they were affected. |
| B．To examine where they were affected. |
| C．To find out whether they were affected. |
| A．The space travel.. | B．A lack of food.. | C．Loss of appetite. |
| A．One dog landed in the Indian Ocean. |
| B．Mice helped people explore space. |
| C．Monkeys were being sent into space. |
