6、NASA postpones Discovery landing

    After orbiting the earth for nearly two weeks, astronauts aboard space shuttle Discovery were told to circle the planet for another day as bad weather in Florida forced NASA to delay Monday’s scheduled landing.

   The astronauts had powered up their space-craft and were awaiting word from Mission Control to fire their breaking rockets and head for home when controllers announced early Monday that low clouds over Cape Canaveral would postpone the landing.

   When cloud cover still threatened after the second of two landing opportunities, NASA officials rescheduled the landing for Tuesday, when they would consider two alternative landing sites in addition to Florida’s Kennedy Space Center.

  Before the weather deteriorated, Discovery had been set to land before dawn. Its return to the earth would have concluded the first shuttle flight since Columbia disintegrated while re-entering the earth’s atmosphere 21/2 years ago.

Discovery’s 13-day flight to the international space station may be the last one for a long while. NASA grounded the shuttle fleet after a slab(板層)of insulating foam（絕緣泡沫） broke off  Discovery’s external fuel tank during liftoff---the very thing that doomed(使…遭厄運(yùn)) Columbia and was supposed to have been corrected. Discovery was the first shuttle to visit the station since 2002.

   As a result of Columbia, Discovery’s crew inspected their ship for damage on five different days and also tested repair techniques developed since the tragedy.

 

56．According to the report we know Discovery planned to land on  ______.

  A. another day                      B. Tuesday

  C. 13^th                                 D. Monday

57．The astronauts received word from Mission Control _______.

  A. once                                 B. twice      

  C. three times                        D. we don’t know

58．The underlined word deteriorated in the fourth paragraph means:

  A. 好轉(zhuǎn)        B. 正常       C. 惡化        D. 晴朗

59．The reason Columbia disintegrated（碎裂）is that________.

a)        Fuel tank was broken off

b)        Fuel used up

c)        It landed the wrong site

d)        It received no signal from Mission Control

60．How many shuttle flights returned to the earth before Columbia?

  A. One        B. Two      C. Three     D. We have no idea