英文早点丨0123_中国登月的首批植物已经GG了

考研英语时事阅读 · 公众号 · 考研 · 2019-01-23 06:59

正文

背景知识

“嫦娥四号”是首次造访月球背面的人类探测器，其于1月3日着陆，携带了一系列用来分析该区域地质特征的探测仪器。此前人类也曾在国际空间站内培养植物，但在月球上尚属首次。具备在月球上种植植物的能力对于前往火星等长期太空任务至关重要。一次火星之旅可能需要花费两年半的时间，如果可以种植植物，宇航员便可能在太空收获自己的食物，减少返回地球重新补给的需求。此次“嫦娥四号”搭载了棉花种子、土豆种子、酵母及果蝇卵等生物。植物被放置在探测器内一个密封罐内，这些作物将尝试自行形成一个迷你生物圈，生物圈内将是一个人为且自给自足的环境。

早起卡

A man can fail many times, but he isn’t a failure until he begins to blame somebody else.----Burroughs

翻译卡

Just days after China revealed a cotton seed had sprouted on a lunar lander and become what was possibly the first plant life to grow on Earth's nearest neighbor, scientists ended the experiment when they shut down power remotely. Temperatures inside the biosphere had grown too erratic and reached extremes that would likely kill all life, including the seeds and eggs.

The seeds were contained inside a special container situated in China's Chang'e 4 probe, which became the first successful mission to the far side of the moon on January 3.

Activated on landing, the self-contained biosphere was designed to raise seeds and hatch fruit fly eggs in an attempt to create a tiny ecosystem and assess how it reacted to the high-radiation, low-gravity environment.

文本选自 ：CNN（美国有线电视新闻网）

作者： Yong Xiong and Ben Westcott

原文标题 ： China's first plant to grow on the moon is already dead

原文发布时间 ： 17 Jan. 2019

单词释义

cotton

英 [ˈkɒtn] 美 [ˈkɑ:tn]