英语听力精选进阶版 7213（在线收听）

Background: 在人类探索宇宙奥秘的同时，大量的太空垃圾也被遗弃在地球轨道上。这些人造太空物体对宇航员造成了生命危害，同时也容易破坏卫星的运作。一位意大利航天局的研究人员建议发射一系列自动清扫机来清理这些太空垃圾。

After a half century of successes in space, low-Earth orbit has become a very messy place.

More than 17,000 pieces of space junk bigger than a hand's breadth are floating around up there; the largest of them weighs nearly ten tonnes.

The debris poses a growing risk to communication satellites and occasionally manned space missions.

As time goes on catastrophic collisions become more likely, which would create even more debris.

Marco Castronuovo has a simple plan to solve the problem, starting with the largest, heaviest threats.

He's proposed sending up a robotic mission that will skip between chunks of junk, affixing a little rocket to each one that will drive them out of orbit.

The debris would then burn up harmlessly in the atmosphere over an ocean.

Each orbital housekeeper could clean up five objects a year, and would be sent on a seven-year mission.

It's a slow but straightforward solution to a problem that could otherwise leave low-Earth orbit completely unusable.

Glossary 词汇表

messy 乱七八糟的 

space junk 太空垃圾 

a hand's breadth 一手宽 

a manned space mission 载人航天计划 

a threat 危险 

to skip 跳越 

harmlessly 无害的 

an orbital housekeeper 轨道管家 

a straightforward solution 简明易懂的解决方案 

unusable 无法使用

Questions:

1. How will the proposed device work? 

It would attach a little rocket to a piece of junk and make it leave the Earth's orbit and burn up in the atmosphere.

2. Which would be the first items to be targeted? 

The largest and heaviest ones.

3. How many objects can the proposed device remove from space? 

Up to five objects a year.

4. True or false? Marco Castronuovo’s solution was described as simple and speedy.

False. It was described as simple and straightforward but slow.