B – Comprehension Test 2

Part 1

1) What health problem is urgent for those astronauts who travel in zero gravity?

2) What disease are its symptoms like?

3) Where is the new technology currently being tested?

4) How do the signals sent to body affect the astronaut’s bones?

Part 2

TOM TILLEY: It's unlikely that an astronaut returning from their latest ________on the space station will start breaking______________________.But later in life, when normal _____________________starts___________, the danger can increase dramatically.An article published in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research found that _______ members on the International Space Station lost up to _____________of bone mass per month. This is one of the human related factors that's stopping mankind from making the trip to Mars which would take several years for the ___________________.

Part 3

US inventor, Professor Clint Rubin, is working __________________that may solve the problem.CLINT RUBIN: Think of an astronaut, that's basically being _______________weight bearing, or deprived of gravity, as a model for ________________________So we've just decided, as____________, we're less and less active, and without the proper mechanical signals to the skeleton, our skeleton begins to _______________________.Now all of a sudden, put yourself up in space, where essentially you're in a vacuum of mechanical signals, you're just not _________________your skeleton at all, that in essence, it's _____________________accelerated ageing.And so, our goal, with our science and our research is to try to put those mechanical signals back into the astronauts' skeleton, so that in reality they're not going through this rapid ______________________.

Part 4

TOM TILLEY: So how does this new technology work?CLINT RUBIN: The technology is based on _____________very, very small mechanical ______________the skeleton, the same sort of things that their ____________would do when they're active.So the astronauts, when using the ______________for 10 minutes per day, would basically be harnessed to it, like with a very, very _____________spring.And they'd sit there and they'd work on their __________________, or read a book while their skeleton________________________________.

Part 5

TOM TILLEY: How long are some of these astronauts spending in the space stations?CLINT RUBIN: So these astronauts basically are ... some of them have been up there for____________________. But typically, once they're there for greater than 90 days, or up to six months, they're sort of risking ... they're putting their skeletons at a higher level of risk of ______________.So again, the challenge that you've got when you're thinking about a _________________ round trip to Mars, is that what happens if you're losing two per cent of your bone per month, that by the time you get to Mars, and the challenge of Mars' _____________, that if you happen to trip and break your____________, or your _______________________while you're up on Mars, that it's quite a __________ to the nearest hospital.ELIZABETH JACKSON: Professor Clint Rubin from the State University of New York speaking to Tom Tilley.