Esta série Conversações Diárias é sobre uma família em viagem pelos 50 estados dos EUA. Junte-se a eles à medida que vão conhecendo as atividades de lazer e a história de cada lugar. Essas conversas são para alunos de inglês de nível intermediário ou superior.
Se você preferir acompanhar a lição apenas em inglês, clique aqui.
Neste diálogo, a família viaja a Huntsville, no Alabama, e visita o Centro de Voos Espaciais Marshall da Nasa.
Claudine: I thought NASA was in Florida, not Alabama.
Gina: NASA is in Florida as well, at the Kennedy Space Center, but the Marshall Space Flight Center is the largest NASA center.
Sam: And what do they do here?
Gina: For starters, they design and build engines, vehicles and instruments.
Paul: And the things they build make space exploration possible.
Gina: And it’s home to the most powerful rocket ever designed.
Paul: This is a place that enables scientific discovery related to space!
Agora vamos rever o vocabulário.
NASA is an acronym for National Aeronautics and Space Administration [Administração Nacional de Aeronáutica e Espaço (Nasa)]. It is a U.S. government organization that organizes travel into space and does research about space. An acronym is a word formed from the first letter of each word in a phrase.
Space [espaço] is the area beyond the Earth’s atmosphere where there are other planets, stars, etc.
For starters [para começar; em primeiro lugar] is an informal phrase that means first of all or to start with.
A vehicle [veículo] is a machine that is used to carry people or things from one place to another. A space vehicle (or spacecraft) is a machine that carries people or things from Earth to space.
An instrument [instrumento] is a tool or device that is used for a particular purpose, especially for scientific work.
Space exploration [exploração espacial] is travel through space to learn more about it and discover new stars, etc.
A rocket [foguete] is a spacecraft shaped like a tube. Fuel is burned and expelled out of the rear, sending the vehicle forward.
Enable [permitir; possibilitar] means to make it possible for someone to do something.
Scientific discovery [descoberta científica] is the process of asking questions to gain information related to the natural world and find something new.
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