浙江省金华市义乌市2020届九年级上学期英语学期中检测卷（含听力音频）

    I'm not the kind of mother who normally brushes her daughter's hair, and my daughter has never liked sitting there, waiting for me to do it.

    But today, I set my daughter Sally on a kitchen stool (凳子). She's sitting high with her eyes closed, skin still wet from the shower, and her long hair behind her back. I realize she is enjoying the moment. It's the last time for a week that our bodies will connect. Today I'm sending Sally away for a week of summer camp. This was all my idea. She's nearly 12, and I noticed that I'm with my child nearly 24 hours a day.

    Living on a farm without any neighbors, I've chosen a life that is quieter than a normal family's. But rather than expecting space away from me, Sally has become increasingly dependent. What frightens me most is that she has become a "mini-me", even has the same hobbies, dreams, and opinions as me. That's why I pulled her to the summer camp: a nearby wilderness(荒野) camp called Hawk Circle.

    After eating, I drive Sally to Hawk Circle. Once we get there, we are introduced to her fellow campers. Sally stands by them, holding my hand, horror in her eyes, trying to work up the courage to join a game of soccer. "I need you for a few more minutes," she tells me. I pull her away to walk to one of the camp's workers. "Excuse me," I say loudly, "I'd like to introduce you to my daughter. Maybe you could help her meet a few of these kids." He comes over to talk to Sally, and then I disappear before she realizes it.

    It is a hard time for me to drive back. When I arrive home, I calm down and remind myself why I chose this way. I want Sally to have a chance to find herself. I want to learn who she is. If I don't set her free, I fear I'll never really meet her real personality.

    Many people know that rubbish is a big problem on planet Earth. What many people don't know is that junk has become a problem in outer space too.

    According to BBC News, there are more than 22,000 pieces of space junk floating around the earth. And these are just the things that we can see from the surface of the earth by telescopes (望远镜). There are also millions of smaller pieces of junk that we can't see.

    Objects, like bits of old space rockets or satellites, move around the planet at very high speeds, so fast that even a very small piece can break important satellites or become dangerous to astronauts. If the smallest piece of junk crashed into a spaceship, it could damage it.

    To make things worse, when two objects in space crash, they break into many smaller pieces. For example, when a U.S. satellite hit an old Russian rocket in 2009, it broke into more than 2,000 pieces, increasing the amount of space junk.

    To reduce additional space junk, countries have agreed that all new space tools can only stay in space for 25 years at most. Each tool must be built to fall safely into the earth's atmosphere after that time. In the upper parts of the atmosphere, it will burn up.

    Many scientists are also suggesting different ways to clean up space junk. In England scientists are testing a metal net that can be fired into space junk. The net catches the junk and then pulls it into the earth's atmosphere to burn up. The Germans are building robots that can collect pieces of space junk and bring them back to Earth to be safely destroyed.

    "The problem is becoming more challenging because we're sending more objects into space to help people use their mobile phones and computers," says Marco Castronuovo, an Italian space researcher.

    "The time to act is now. The longer we leave the problem, the bigger it will become," he says.