1 . US Space Agency Returns to Mars with InSight Lander

The American space agency’s lander InSight is to arrive on Mars at the end of November, 2018. Unlike NASA’s Curiosity rover, InSight will not move across the planet’s surface. Instead it will become the first spacecraft (航天器) used only for exploring underground. It will study the geography of Mars, searching for signs of Martian (火星的) quakes.

InSight is a project of U.S. and Europe. It is 6 meters long and 1.5 meters wide. It weighs 360 kilograms. InSight’s 1.8-meter robotic arm will put two experiments in place. Both are designed to explore underground of Mars to learn about the inside.

Bruce Banerdt is the lead scientist for InSight. He viewed the spacecraft as a robot that can take care of itself. “It’s got its own brain. It’s got an arm. It can listen and feel things. It pulls its own power out of the sun,” he noted.

Thomas Zurbuchen, one of the heads in NASA, said the results of the InSight project could “change the way we think about the inside of our earth.” But, first, InSight will have to land on Mars undamaged. Since Mars exploration started in the 1960s, only about 40 percent of the explorations have succeeded.

Tom Hoffman is InSight’s project manager. He said earlier successes do not lessen the concerns for each new exploration. “That we’ve done it before doesn’t mean we’re not nervous and excited about doing it again,” he said.

InSight will enter the Martian atmosphere (大气层) traveling at 19,800 kilometers an hour. It will slow for landing on a wide flat area on Mars. If all goes well, InSight could carry out its experiments in about 10 weeks. The InSight project is expected to continue for one Martian year, about two years on Earth.

3 . Scientists have found evidence of a giant planet far out in our solar system. In a statement, the California Institute of Technology—Caltech—said this planet travels in a strange orbit in the distant solar system.

The discovery was made by two researchers at Caltech: Konstantin Batygin and Mike Brown. They used mathematical modelling and computer simulations to find the planet. So far, there have not been any direct observations of the planet.

“My jaw hit the floor,” said astronomer Mike Brown when he realized there might be a ninth planet.

The scientists said it would take the planet 10,000 to 20,000 years just to make one full orbit around the sun. The new planet which is called “Planet Nine” has a mass about 10 times the size of the earth. If they are right, the newly found planet will be the ninth planet in our solar system.

It is believed that the planet orbits, or travels, around the sun from a great distance. The planet Neptune’s average distance to the sun is about 4.5 billion kilometres. But “Planet Nine” could be 20 times farther away from the sun than that.

While they did not get a picture of “Planet Nine” yet, the scientists say they are using the biggest and the best telescopes on earth to try to find “Planet Nine”. They want to find out more about its orbit and its impact on the outer part of our solar system.

Brown and Batygin reported their findings in the Astronomical Journal. They say that this new planet is so large that there should be no doubt that it is a true planet.

Robert Massey is with the Royal Astronomical Society in London. He said that planet had been predicted before, and then was not found. But he said the work of these researchers was definitely worth following up.

The US space agency NASA says new data from observations of the asteroid (小行星) Bennu still suggests that the object could one day hit Earth. But, the scientists    1    (study) the asteroid predict in a new study that there is very little chance that Bennu    2    (hit) Earth in the coming century.

Bennu and other asteroids are considered near Earth objects. Scientists identify such objects    3    those having the possibility of coming within 50 million kilometers of Earth's orbit. Bennu    4    (discover) in 1999. It is believed    5    (form) more than 4.5 billion years ago. It moves into near-Earth space because of gravitational interactions with other    6    (planet). Bennu makes its closest pass to Earth every six years.

The latest data on Bennu was collected by NASA's Osiris- Rex spacecraft,    7    spent more than two years observing the asteroid. Last October, Osiris-Rex also    8    (success) collected samples (样本) from Bennu. The spacecraft is now on a trip back to Earth, with NASA expecting its    9    (arrive) in September 2023. The main goal of the Osiris-Rex mission was to collect the samples. Scientists say they hope    10    material can help them better understand how the planet formed and how life began on Earth.

6 . How many things can you see in the night sky? A lot! On a clear night you might see the Moon, some planets, and thousands of sparkling stars.

You can see even more with a telescope. You might see stars where you only saw dark space before. You might see that many stars look larger than others. You might see that some stars that look white are really red or blue. With bigger and bigger telescope you can see more and more objects in the sky. And you can see those objects in more and more detail.

But scientists believe there are some things in the sky that we will never see. We won’t see them with the biggest telescope in the world, on the clearest night of the year.

That’s because they’re invisible. They’re the mysterious dead stars called black holes.

You might find it hard to imagine that stars die. After all, our Sun is a star. Year after year we see it up in the sky, burning brightly, giving us heat and light. The Sun certainly doesn’t seem to be getting old or weak. But stars do burn out and die after billions of years.

As a star’s gases burn, they give off light and heat. But when the gas runs out, the star stops burning and begins to die.

As the star cools, the outer layers of the star pull in toward the center. The star squashes into a smaller and smaller ball. If the star was very small, the star ends up as a cold, dark ball called a black dwarf. If the star was very big, it keeps squashing inward until it’s packed together tighter than anything in the universe.

Imagine if the Earth were crushed until it was the size of a tiny marble. That’s how tightly this dead star, a black hole, is packed. What pulls the star in towards its center with such power? It’s the same force that pulls you down when you jump—the force called gravity. A black hole is so tightly packed that its gravity sucks in everything—even light. The light from a black hole can never come back to your eyes. That’s why you see nothing but blackness.

So the next time you stare up at the night sky, remember: there’s more in the sky than meets the eyes! Scattered in the silent darkness are black holes—the great mystery of space.

8 . Edmund Halley was an English scientist who lived over 200 years ago. He studied the observations of comets which other scientists had made. The orbit of one particular comet was a very difficult mathematical problem. He could not figure it out. Neither could other scientists who dealt with such problems.

However, Halley had a friend named Newton, who was a brilliant mathematician. Newton thought he had already worked out that problem, but he could not find the papers on which he had done it. He told Halley that the orbit of a comet had the shape of an ellipse.

Now Halley set to work. He figured out the orbits of some of the comets that had been observed by scientists. He made a surprising discovery. The comets that had appeared in the years 1531, 1607, and 1682 all had the same orbit. Yet their appearances had been 75 to 76 years apart.

This seemed very strange to Halley. The different comets followed the same orbit. The more Halley thought about it, the more he thought that there had not been three different comets, as people thought. He decided that they had simply seen the same comet three times. The comet had gone away and had come back again.

It was an astonishing idea! Halley felt certain enough to make a prediction of what comet would happen in the future. He decided that this comet would appear in the year 1758. There were 53 years to go before Halley’s prediction could be tested. In 1758 the comet appeared in the sky. Halley did not see it, for he had died some years before. Ever since then that comet has been called Halley’s comet, in his honor.