雅思阅读全真练习系列（十一）

二、Search begins for 'Earth' beyond solar system

　　1. A European spacecraft took off today to spearhead the search for another "Earth" among the stars.

　　2. The Corot space telescope blasted off aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket from the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan shortly after 2.20pm.

　　3. Corot, short for convection rotation and planetary transits, is the first instrument capable of finding small rocky planets beyond the solar system. Any such planet situated in the right orbit stands a good chance of having liquid water on its surface, and quite possibly life, although a leading scientist involved in the project said it was unlikely to find "any little green men".

　　4. Developed by the French space agency, CNES, and partnered by the European Space Agency (ESA), Austria, Belgium, Germany, Brazil and Spain, Corot will monitor around 120,000 stars with its 27cm telescope from a polar orbit 514 miles above the Earth. Over two and a half years, it will focus on five to six different areas of the sky, measuring the brightness of about 10,000 stars every 512 seconds.