When she was just three years old, Alyssa Carson from the USA took an interest     1    the planet Mars. From that time on, her lifelong passion for and     2    (curious) about space began! Then, Alyssa     3    (start) to do all the things related to space!

Alyssa’s goal is to help others understand the potential for human life in outer space. She also wants to be one of the first humans     4    (walk) on the planet Mars. She even imagines     5    (live) on Mars! And while doing so, Alyssa wants to inspire lots of other kids to learn more about space and science.

She is studying astrobiology (天体生物学) at the Florida Institute of Technology. It is     6    only program in the USA focused on the potential for life on other planets. Whether you want to study the effects of space travel on humans, discover past or present life on Mars, or help develop     7    (way) to sustain (维持) life on the moon, you will be prepared at the Florida Institute of Technology.

Alyssa is a(n)     8    (impress) example of a young person     9    focuses on her passion and becomes the best version of     10    (she). Her example also inspires other kids to do the same.

NASA has discovered the eighth planet of a star system, similar to our solar system. The star, Kepler-90, is over 2,500 light years away and larger and     1     (hot) than our sun. It is the first star known to have as many planets as our solar system.

The Kepler-90 star system is much more compact (紧凑的) than our solar system. The outermost planet     2     (orbit) the star at about the same distance as the earth goes around the sun. Its inner planets are smaller and rocky     3     the outer ones are larger and made up of gas.

The newly discovered planet, Kepler-90i, is     4     (probable) rocky and similar to our earth, but because of its closeness to its home star, it has     5     average surface temperature of about 400°C. It moves around the star once every 14.4 days.

The discovery was made on data     6     (provide) by the Kepler space telescope. Launched in March 2009, the telescope has constantly been looking     7     certain sections of the universe in search of new stars and planetary systems. Up to now, over 2,000 new systems     8     (discover).

    9     (help) analyze the data, NASA has been relying on artificial intelligence software supplied by Google. This software examines weak     10     (signal) of light when objects pass in front of a star. The new way of examining data is expected to find even more new planets in the future.

6 . The idea that humans might one day live on another planet has become more and more possible thanks to science, but it still seems very far away. But what British physicist Stephen Hawking said at Oxford University in the UK made that “one day” feel a lot more real and closer.

According to Hawking, we humans only have about 1,000 years left on Earth under the threats of climate change, nuclear weapons and robots. Our beat chance to survive will be to move to another planet, “so a disaster on Earth would not mean the end of the human race”, he said.

Fortunately, we have already found that planet — Mars. In fact, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has found strong evidence last year that liquid water flows on Mars. This made the idea of living there look even more hopeful.

In fact, the speed of Mars exploration seems to have been greeting faster every day over the past few years.

In 2013, for example,the Dutch company Mars One started the first project to put humans on Mars in the mid-2020s. They offered people one-way tickets to go and build a new home on the red planet. Even if it means they’ll never come back to Earth, over 200,000 people still applied for the project, which is now in its last stages of narrowing that number down to 24.

In September, Elon Musk, the founder of US company SpaceX, also revealed a plan to get humans to Mars in six years. To meet that goal, the company is working on building larger and stronger rockets that can carry more passengers. Musk is also planning to develop a system that can produce fuel on Mars using water and carbon dioxide so that spaceships can fly back to Earth.

But staying on Mars for a few days is one thing, and living there for the rest of your life is another.

For starters, humans cannot breathe the air on Mars, so a way to keep making oxygen is needed. Dust storms also happen often on Mars, making farming there difficult. The radiation from the sun id dangerous too, because Mars doesn’t have an atmosphere like Earth’s to give people protection.

But Hawking himself seems to be looking on the bright side. He believes that we will work things out just in time, as long as we “remember to look up at the stars and not down at our feet”, he said.

7 . In September 1966, NASA launched its second Surveyor spacecraft to study the surface of the moon. Surveyor 2 was carried to space by a Centaur stage rocket. Unfortunately, it crash-landed on the lunar surface, but that’s not the end of Surveyor 2’s story. The upper stage of its Centaur rocket has spent decades floating around the solar system. This week, astronomers confirmed that the upper stage of the Centaur rocket has returned to Earth for a brief visit. Researchers guessed that a strange-looking object was a piece of human-made space debris (碎片) when they first saw it in September. But some serious work was required to confirm its identity.

Scientists around the world have been studying the booster (助推器) since September, when the then-unidentified object received the name 2020 SO. By observing how light reflects off 2020 SO and comparing those observations to space debris of a similar age and material, scientists were able to confirm the object’s identity. The 1966 Centaur’s upper stage re-entered Earth’s orbit in November and astronomers got the best look at the rocket booster on December 1, when it made its closest pass to Earth.

The rocket booster caught astronomers’ attention because its orbit is very similar to Earth’s, but it was moving much slower than most asteroids (小行星). Paul Chodas, from NASA, studied 2020 SO’s orbit to find out where the object came from and he believed it came from Earth around September 1966, when Surveyor 2 launched.

“There’s very little ambiguity (模棱两可),” says University of Arizona planetary scientist Vishnu Reddy to The New York Times. It was a perfect match. “the final apples to apples comparison.”

China shows first high-definition pictures of Mars taken by Tianwen I

The China National Space Administration made public on Thursday morning the first high-definition pictures of Mars taken by the nation's spacecraft.

The pictures - two black-and-white and one color - were shot     1     (recent) by China's Tianwen 1 robotic probe when     2     spacecraft was travelling in Mars orbit, according to the administration.

The two black-and-white 7-meter-resolution     3    (image) were taken by the high-definition camera on Tianwen I's orbiter when the probe was about 330 to 350 kilometers above the Martian surface. Craters, mountain ridges and sand dunes on the red planet are clear on the pictures.

The color picture was generated by another camera on the orbiter,     4     (show) Mars’ north pole.

Tianwen 1, the country's first     5     ( independence) Mars mission,     6     (launch) by a Long March 5 heavy-lift carrier rocket on July 23, 2020 from the Wenchang Space Launch Center in Hainan province, kicking off the nation's planetary exploration program.

The 5-metric ton probe,     7    consists of two major parts - the orbiter and the landing capsule - has flown for 224 days and about 475 million km. Currently, it is about 212 million km away     8    Earth, according to the administration.

It entered     9     (it) preset parking orbit above Mars on Feb 24 and would fly in this orbit for about three months before releasing its landing capsule, said the administration.

All of the seven mission payloads(承载) on the orbiter will be activated during the probe’s stay in the parking orbit     10     (carry) out scientific tasks and also to observe and analyze the landforms and weathers of the optimal landing site.