2023年5月北京地区成人本科学士学位英语统一考试真题
Part I
Reading Comprehension
Passage 1
Mission managers at NASA spent $330 million to send a refrigerator-size craft 7 million miles into space and punch an asteroid(小行星) in the nose. The spacecraft is known as DART, which stands for Double Asteroid Redirection Test. (76) It was launched last November. Its job was to fly out to the asteroid Dimorphos and crash in to it. The purpose of the collision(碰撞) was to see if DART's impact could speed up the asteroid's orbit around another space rock, Didymos. Neither Dimorphos nor Didymos poses(造成) any danger to Earth. But in the future, other asteroids might. The DART impact tested a technology that could one day be needed to protect our planet.
美国国家航空航天局（NASA）的项目管理人员花费了3.3亿美元，将一台冰箱大小的航天器送往700万公里外的太空，并撞击一颗小行星的表面。这艘航天器被称为DART，即“双小行星重定向测试”的缩写。它于去年11月发射升空。其任务是飞往小行星Dimorphos，并故意撞向它。这次撞击的目的在于检验DART的撞击是否能加速Dimorphos围绕另一颗太空岩石Didymos的轨道运行。无论是Dimorphos还是Didymos都不会对地球构成威胁。但在未来，其他小行星可能会。DART的撞击试验了一项技术，这项技术有朝一日可能被用来保护我们的星球。
The collision took place on September 26. Dimorphos completes an orbit around Didymos every 11 hours and 55 minutes. For the mission to be a success, NASA calculated that DART would have to change Dimorphos's orbit by at least 73 seconds. On October 11, the DART team announced its results: The collision speed up Dimorphos's orbit by 32 minutes.
碰撞发生在9月26日。Dimorphos每11小时55分钟绕Didymos运行一周。为了使任务成功，NASA计算出DART必须改变Dimorphos轨道至少73秒。10月11日，DART团队宣布了其结果：这次碰撞使Dimorphos的轨道加速了32分钟。
Ever since the collision, six Earth-based telescopes have kept watch on Dimorphos. They are capturing images not just of the asteroid but of the rock and dust that DART's impact blasted(爆炸) into space.
自碰撞发生以来，地球上的六座望远镜一直在密切关注双形态星。它们不仅捕捉到了小行星的图像，还拍摄到了DART撞击后喷射到太空中的岩石和尘埃。
It's too soon to know exactly what the DART results mean for the future of planetary defense. But it has now been proven that it's possible to change the speed of an asteroid, and that's a good start. While there are currently no asteroids on a direct impact course with Earth, there is a large population of near-Earth asteroids—more than in all shapes and sizes. The valuable data collected by DART will contribute to planetary defense strategies, especially to understanding what kind of force is needed to shift the orbit of an asteroid that may collide with Earth.
要确切了解DART任务的结果对行星防御未来意味着什么还为时过早。但现在已经证明，改变小行星的速度是可能的，这是一个良好的开端。虽然目前没有小行星处于直接撞击地球的轨道上，但存在大量近地小行星，其形状和大小各异。DART收集的宝贵数据将有助于行星防御策略，特别是了解需要何种程度的力量来改变可能与地球相撞的小行星轨道。
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