THE MOON

Son: Look, Dad! How bright and near the moon looks tonight!

Father: But it isn’t as near as it looks.

Son: I know it’s far away from the earth.

Father: It’s three hundred and eighty thousand kilometers away.

Son: How far is that?

Father: Well, it takes more than three days to get there by spaceship.

Son: A spaceship flies very, very fast, doesn’t it?

Father: Yes. It flies at about eleven kilometers a second. In 1969 two Americans got to the moon by spaceship. That was one of the most exciting moments of that year.

Son: They didn’t find any living things there, did they?

Father: No, they didn’t. It’s too hot in the day and too cold at night. Nothing can live on the moon.

Son: I hear walking on the moon is more difficult. It’s like jumping and flying. Is that so?

Father: Yes, isn’t that interesting! Everything is much lighter on the moon. You can jump much higher on the moon than on the earth.

Son: I wish I could fly to the moon in a spaceship one day. It must be great fun.

Scientists think that there has been life on the earth for hundreds of millions of years. However, we have not found life on any other planets yet.

The earth is a planet and it goes around the sun. Seven other planets also go around the sun. None of them has an environment like that of the earth, so scientists do not think they will find life on them. The sun and its planets are called the solar system, and our solar system is a small part of a much larger group of stars and planets, called the Galaxy or the Milky Way. There are billions of stars in the Galaxy, and our sun is only one of them.

Scientists have also discovered many other galaxies in the universe. They are very far away and their light has to travel for many years to reach us. So how large is the universe? 这是无法想象的。

Scientists have sent spaceships to the planet Mars to take photos. They have even sent spaceships to travel outside the solar system. However, no spaceship has travelled far enough to reach other stars in our Galaxy.

Scientists have always asked the questions: with so many stars in the universe, are we alone, or is there life out there in space? Have there been visitors to the earth from other planets? Why has no one communicated with us? We do not know the answers...yet.

When we talk about the space, we know the universe means the earth, the sun, the moon, the stars and the space between them. Many of the stars are so far away that we cannot see them.

Through our geography lessons, we know the earth goes around the sun, and the moon goes around the earth.

We have day and night because the earth keeps turning all the time. Just because the moon is closer to the earth than the sun, it looks much bigger than the sun. The sun is bright enough to give out very strong light. The moon can’t give any light at all, but it looks quite bright too. Why? In fact, the light from the moon comes from the sun. But in fact the stars are much bigger and brighter than the moon.

There are many other planets in the universe. But of all these planets, only on the earth there are living things. People on the earth have been studying space all the time. They’ve sent spaceships into space many times. On November 3rd and 14th, 2011, Chinese scientists let Shenzhou Ⅷ successfully dock with（对接）the Tiangong I twice. This is one of the greatest events in the history of China’s space.