The Shenzhou XIII mission was sent on October 16th, 2021. The astronauts are Zhai Zhigang, Wang Yaping and Ye Guangfu. They planned to spend six months working in the space station. Early last month, 41, was China’s first woman spacewalker in the space.

They gave space-based classes from space station to students around the world. The astronauts showed the space station and their scientific experiments to the students, and showed some interesting physical phenomena to them.

On October 13th, almost all students watched the space-based classes around China. It was the first time for Chinese students to have classes in this new way. It is a good way to make more young people be more interested in the space and study science and technology harder.

Venus (金星) is close to the earth. It is the second planet from the sun. The earth is the third planet from the sun. Venus is similar (相似的) to the earth in size and mass (质量). It is often described as the earth’s “sister”.

Scientists have been learning about Venus for a long time. First they looked at Venus through telescopes (望远镜). But Venus is covered with thick clouds. Scientists could not see Venus well through the clouds. So they made guesses about it.

For a long time, scientists thought that Venus had water and plants. They thought Venus might have animals too. But they didn’t know for sure.

Then scientists found a way to learn more about Venus. In the 1960s, they began sending probes (航天探测器) to Venus. The probes flew through the thick clouds. They took pictures of Venus up close. They found out many things too. The probes sent the pictures and things they found out back to the scientists.

The scientists learned a lot from the probes. First they learned that most of their guesses were not right. And they learned that Venus is very hot.

After that, scientists knew they could not send people to Venus. But they still wanted to know more about it. So they sent new probes. These new probes took great pictures of the planet. The pictures showed that Venus has plains (平原) and mountains! And in some ways, Venus looks like the earth.

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.