Unit 4 Astronomy the science of the stars人类对太空的探索从未停止过。你知道第一个遨游太空的人和第一个登陆月球的人都是谁吗？让我们一起来了解一下吧！Who Was the First Person in Space?Growing up in today’s world, it can be hard to imagine a time when outer space was a true mystery. You already know men have walked on the Moon. The International Space Station orbits(绕轨道飞行) Earth and sends back all sorts of information.Way back in the day, though, outer space was an unexplored frontier(领域). The people of Earth could only look up at the sky and wonder about what was up there.All that changed on April 12, 1961. That day, Russian cosmonaut(宇航员 ) Yuri Gagarin became the first human being in space. In the Russian Vostok 1 spacecraft, he made his historic 108minute orbit around Earth—a place no man had gone before.Gagarin’s achievement set off a competition between the United States and the Soviet Union known as the “space race”. For example, Alan Shepard became thefirst American in space less than a month after Gagarin. On July 21, 1969, American Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the Moon as part of the Apollo 11 mission(任务)．Gagarin and Armstrong’s groundbreaking space travels paved the way for what was to come. From space shuttle flights to manned space stations orbiting Earth, we now know much more about the world beyond Earth’s atmosphere than would have ever been possible without these pioneers!Today, scientists are more willing to use modern technology to explore the 1outer reaches of space. Would you like to be on the cutting edge( 前 沿 ) of future astronomical discoveries? If so, you might want to work in a field such as science, technology, engineering or mathematics...
