From a plane you can see the fields, cities, mountains or rivers below. If you go into space, you see more and more of the earth. Many man-made satellites (人造卫星) are sent into space to look at the earth, the stars and other planets and learn more about them.

The moon is our neighbor in space. It is smaller than the earth. Plants can’t grow on the moon because there’s no air or water on it.

The moon hasn’t got its own light. It shines back the light of the sun. When the sun is shining on the side of the moon that faces us, it looks like a great round ball. We can’t see the moon when the sun is shining on the side of the moon that faces away from us.

In fact, the moon is far away from us. It is three hundred and eighty thousand kilometres away from the earth. Of course, we can fly to the moon in a spaceship. A spaceship flies very, very fast. It only takes more than three days to get there by spaceship!

China has named the nation’s first Mars rover（火星车）ZhuRong. For all of us, Zhu Rong is a well-suited name.

In an ancient Chinese story, Zhu Rong had the face of a man and the body of an animal. H rode on two dragons. When he had a big fight with Gong Gong, the god of water, Zhu Rong won. But after the fight, the human world came into complete darkness. Then he brought fire from heaven（天国）to the world.

“Zhu Rong is regarded as the earliest god of fire in traditional Chinese culture,” a space official said. “The first Mars rover was named Zhu Rong. The name symbolizes（象征）light and hope for space exploration（探索）in our country, and means to guide humans to continue exploration.”

After leaving the earth last summer, Zhu Rong circled Mars for several months and landed on it in May. In recent years, our country has sent up the world’s first quanturn satellite（量子卫星）, and Chang’e-4 has made a soft landing on the moon. We have made great progress in space technology and will soon start building our own space station.

Mars is the fourth planet from the sun. Scientists are now watching it. And now three little spacecrafts are studying it. They are taking pictures. 【小题1】 All six are working to find the planet’s past. Did anything ever live on Mars?

No living things can live without water. 【小题2】 On September 29th, scientists had big news. One spacecraft named Phoenix found snow high in the sky on Mars. 【小题3】 And Phoenix also found ice before. 【小题4】 Scientists want to explore more later. In 2009, space scientists planned to send a larger rover called the Mars Science Laboratory.

Someday scientists hope to send a robot to get rocks and return them to Earth. 【小题5】 Can people land on Mars? No one knows. Before people land on it, machines can do the exploring work.