Reading: Life on the Space Station

Life on the Space Station

I. About four hundred kilometres above our heads, a small crew is at work on the International Space Station, or ISS. The station circles the Earth once every ninety minutes and moves at about 28,000 kilometres an hour. Because it travels so fast, the crew sees sixteen sunrises in a single day.

II. Almost nothing stays where you put it, because there is very little gravity. Water will not stay in a cup, so the crew drinks from closed bags through a straw. Salt and pepper arrive as liquids, since loose grains would float into the eyes of the crew. At night the astronauts climb into sleeping bags that are fixed to the wall.

III. The body changes too. Without gravity the legs carry no weight, so muscles and bones slowly grow weaker. To fight this, every astronaut exercises for about two hours a day on a running machine, a bicycle and a machine that pulls against them. Water is precious, so the station cleans and reuses nearly all of it.

IV. The crew is not there only to float. The station is a laboratory, and its experiments need conditions that no room on Earth can give. Scientists grow lettuce and other plants to learn how roots behave when there is no up or down. They also study the crew, because a journey to Mars would keep people in space far longer.

V. Most astronauts stay for about six months, and people have lived on the station without a break since November 2000. Crews come from several countries and work in more than one language. One small room, the Cupola, has seven windows, and the crew uses it to watch and photograph the Earth below.

מילים חשובות מהטקסט

חמישה כרטיסי אוצר מילים, וכרטיס אחד על צורת השאלות במודול A.

שלוש שאלות פתורות, אחת מכל סוג

שימו לב לסוג השאלה לפני שאתם עונים: לאיתור מחפשים מילה בפסקה, להשלמת משפט מחפשים את ההמשך שהטקסט נותן, ולשאלת זוג צריך ששני הפרטים יהיו נכונים.

שלוש קבוצות לפי סוג השאלה: קודם איתור מפורש, אחר כך השלמת משפט ומשמעות מילה מתוך ההקשר, ולבסוף שאלה שמבקשת שני פרטים, הסקה ורעיון מרכזי. הפסקה שממנה עונים מופיעה בסוגריים.