B - Comprehension Test 2

Listen to the Webcast Space mission looking for Earth-like planets , answer the questions and fill in the gaps.

Part 1

1. What kind of mission did they launch in Kazakhstan? What planets are they to look for?

2. What will the crew monitor? Why?

3. What organization is at the head of mission? What countries do the members of the crew represent?

Part 2

Anne Barker reports.ANNE BARKER: The Russian-built Soyuz rocket _______ from Kazakhstan's Baikonur Cosmodrome. It's carrying a 650-kilogram satellite that'll spend two and a half years in _________, nearly 900 kilometres above the Earth.But it's a tiny telescope onboard that'll make or break this mission. The 27-centimetre _____________, along with a sophisticated camera, will look at tens of thousands of stars outside the solar system and measure ____________changes in their brightness, to _________ planets ____________ around them.The project's Assistant Director, Philippe Goudy, from France's National Space Agency CNES, says it's a bit like watching an_________________________.PHILIPPE GOUDY: Actually, you don't see the planet itself, but you see its effect on the light of the star as the planet passes between the star and the Earth.ANNE BARKER: So it's the stars you'll be looking at more than the planets?PHILIPPE GOUDY: Yes. It is ________________see the planet, because a star is big and very bright and the planet is small and dark.ANNE BARKER: Scientists have already discovered 200___________________-, as they're called, using ___________ telescopes. But like the planet Jupiter, all are made mostly of _________.Philippe Goudy says the COROT project is the first mission to search for planets like Earth that could potentially ________________________.

Part 3

PHILIPPE GOUDY: We have been able ______ to detect large planets, like five, six times the diameter of the Earth. We know, or we suspect there are smaller planets, Earth-like planets, and those are ______________ that we will be trying to detect with COROT.ANNE BARKER: And would you be able to learn anything about possible life on those planets?PHILIPPE GOUDY: This is still probably too soon to say. Life ___________ a lot of conditions, but we know that it requires a planet to be __________, like the Earth, and not large gaseous like Jupiter. It requires to be not too close from the sun, but not too far from its star.Probably COROT will not be able to detect life, but it will be able to tell whether they are in position that are more probable to ______________.

Part 4

ANNE BARKER: COROT's project scientist, Malcolm Fridlund, from the European Space Agency, believes this mission is the first step in a ______________________ of astronomical research.MALCOLM FRIDLUND: It will start changing _____________________ of itself, the context that we see ourselves in, because it will start to find out what kind of a world we live on -are we__________________, or are we not, and then of course the follow-up of that is to find out whether there's life somewhere else.So it's a long road that we are setting off on, but we are starting on the road, and that's what makes me so excited about this.