Many people know that rubbish is a big problem on the planet Earth. What many people don’t know is that rubbish has become a problem in outer space too.
According to BBC News, there are more than 22, 000 pieces of space rubbish around the Earth. And these are just the things that we can see from the Earth. There are also millions of smaller pieces of rubbish that we can’t see.
Things, like bits of old spaceships or satellites (卫星), move around the planet so fast that even a very small piece can break important satellites or become dangerous to astronauts. If the smallest piece of rubbish crashed (碰撞) a spaceship, something would go wrong.
To make things worse, when two things in space crash, they break into many smaller pieces. For example, when a US satellite crashed an old Russian rocket in 2009, it broke into more than 2, 000 pieces, increasing the amount of space rubbish.
To make space rubbish less, countries have agreed that all new spaceships can only stay in space for 25 years at most. Each spaceship must be built to fall safely into the Earth’s atmosphere (大气层) after that time. In the upper parts of the atmosphere, it will burn up.
Many scientists also suggest different ways to clean up space rubbish. In England, scientists are testing a special net that can be sent into space. The net catches the rubbish and then pulls it into the Earth’s atmosphere to burn up. The Germans are building robots that can collect pieces of space rubbish and bring them back to the Earth to make it safe.
“The problem is becoming more difficult because we’re sending more things into space to help people use their mobile phones and computers,” says Marco Castronuovo, an Italian space researcher.
“The time to act is now. The longer we leave the problem, the bigger it will become.” he says.
31. The writer mentions BBC news in Paragraph 2 to ________.
A.teach readers the causes of space rubbish |
B.provide more information about space travel |
C.show that we can just see a few things from the Earth |
D.prove that space rubbish has become a serious problem |
32. We can learn from the passage that ________.
A.there is more space rubbish because of crashes |
B.space rubbish is dangerous because of its small size |
C.old spaceships were unable to burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere |
D.scientists are building robots to collect and burn up pieces of space rubbish |
33. What is the writer’s opinion towards space rubbish?
A.It has nothing to do with people’s everyday life. |
B.Scientists will deal with the problem so there’s no need to worry. |
C.Countries around the world should take it seriously and act right now. |
D.There will be difficult problems for the use of mobile phones and computers. |