World News for Students of English

04-09-2015 15:00

Six NASA recruits, 3 men and 3 women, have taken up residence in a dome near a barren volcano in Hawaii designed to simulate life on Mars.

The team, made up of three scientists, a pilot, an architect and a doctor and journalist will live in isolation for a year while being monitored using cameras and movement trackers. Just as they would if they were on the red planet itself, the recruits will have to wear a spacesuit any time they venture outdoors. The mission will last a full 12 months, while NASA believes a real-life human mission to Mars would take between one and three years.

This is not the first time humans have prepared for just such a mission. In 2011, would-be astronauts from Europe, Russia and China were locked away in windowless, cramped cells for a record-breaking 520 days. While the experiment was deemed a success, it’s thought it could be decades before man steps foot on Mars for real.

Difficult words: recruit (a person who applied to do something and now gets to do it), dome (a building which looks like a ball cut in half), barren (there is only dirt and rocks), the red planet (a nickname for Mars as its land is red), venture (to go somewhere that could be dangerous), cramped (very small), cell (a very small room), deem (to consider).

Source: www.ondemandnews.com