The universe (宇宙) is so wide that we still don’t know much about it. It 【小题1】 the earth, the sun, the moon and the stars, and the space between them as well. Many of the stars can not be 【小题2】 because they are too far away. The moon travels around the earth. It’s our satellite. It’s the 【小题3】 to our earth. So far, humans have visited it already. And spaceships without people have reached other parts of the universe. Many countries have launched lots of man-made satellites into space. The satellites travel around the earth and help us 【小题4】 more about the earth, the weather and other things. They are used for 【小题5】 messages. With their help, TV and radio programs can be sent to countries all over the world. Satellites can also help us make telephone calls to foreign countries.

Our knowledge of the universe has been growing all the time. 【小题6】 space satellites (人造卫星), the world itself is becoming a much 【小题7】 place and people from different countries now understand each other better.

The moon looks 【小题1】 than the stars at night. 【小题2】 in fact, it is smaller than any other stars. The moon looks big to us, because it is closer 【小题3】 us than any stars. The moon goes around the earth. It makes one trip about four weeks. The moon is a round ball and looks beautiful.

Now people know quite a lot about the moon. There is no air or water on the moon, so there are not 【小题4】 trees or animals, or people on it. The moon gets its light (光) from the sun, but some places on the moon are quite dark. It’s very hot on the moon during the day, but it’s very cold at 【小题5】.

What do you know about Mars? What does it look like?

Mars is the 【小题1】 planet from the sun in our solar system and 【小题2】 after Mars, the Roman god of war. Its diameter is 53% as 【小题3】 as that of the earth. Mars gets around the sun 【小题4】 a distance of about 228 million kilometers. You can tell which planet is Mars because it is bright red in the night sky. It looks like a red 【小题5】 orange ball. It’s very beautiful. But during spring and summer, the surface of Mars is covered by strong storms. The gravity on the surface of Mars is about two-fifths as strong as it is on earth. So a person 【小题6】 weighs 90 kilos on earth weighs only 36 kilos on Mars. The 【小题7】 on Mars is between -138℃ and 28℃. The air 【小题8】 only 0.13% oxygen.

It takes a spaceship about eight months 【小题9】 Mars from the earth when the two 【小题10】 are closest to each other. Scientists are still searching for more information about Mars.