Part ADirections: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by c

Part A

Directions: Read the following four texts. Answer the questions below each text by choosing A, B, C or D. (40 points)

Back in July 1965, the Mariner Four Space Probe transmitted the first close-up pictures of Mars and convinced many people that Mars was as dead as our own moon. Two later space probes seemed to confirm this.

But then, in 1971, Mariner Nine raise hopes once again that there could be life on the planet—or at least that life might once have existed there. The range of experiments to be conducted were designed by mission scientists such as Chuck Klein:

"It was like shooting blind, so to speak, to be trying to devise experiments to look for evidence of life. And we decide to try to use an instrument which could incorporate many different assumptions about what Martian biology might be like—what the bugs might be like or not like. But the fundamental proposition in each portion of our experiment was to look, over a period of time, for evidence of some process going on which we could attribute to biology."

The scientists controlled the Viking experiments from a distance of almost 100 million kilometers. Cameras took pictures of the area a round the robot landers—in case anything moved into view. No aliens were spotted by the cameras, but other experiments seems to show signs of life.

"Almost everything that we planned began to give us data of some kind—that is to say, it wasn't like everything was dead. For many weeks, we were goaded by the media, who were terribly excited—they were constantly looking for a headline, you know. They Found Life! They Found Life! Every bit of information that we came up with was squeezed by them to try to put a positive twist on it. We really had to work very hard to maintain our cool and present the data just the way we saw it."

But these apparent signs of life were deceptive. By repeating the experiments and double checking the results, the scientists eventually came to the conclusion that the whole planet was dead and would, in fact, be deadly to living organisms.

Since 1976, there have been no further visits. A probe sent by NASA exploded before reaching the planet last year and it now doesn't look as if there'll be another Mars visit until the end of the decade.

When we do get back there, will we find something new？ And what about us？ Could we ever live on Mars？ This isn't as strange an idea as it sounds according to astronomer Patrick Moorer.

"It's fair to say that, from a technical point of view, we could put men on Mars within the next few decades. Whether we actually do so or not depends very much more upon politics and finance than upon sheer science, but I think it could be done. And I'm quite prepared to believe that by this time in the next century, there will be flourishing colonies upon Mars."

Which of the following is closest in meaning to the sentence "It was shooting blind.., to look for evidence of life..."

A．We were carrying on experiments aimlessly.

B．It was impossible to reach the Mars because of the distance.

C．We could see nothing in the outer space.

D．We didn't believe life really existed on Mars.