They asked Katherine Johnson for the moon, and she gave it to them. With little more than

They asked Katherine Johnson for the moon, and she gave it to them. With little more than a pencil, a slide rule and one of the finest mathematical minds in the country, Mrs. Johnson, who died at 101 on Monday, calculated the precise trajectories (轨道)that would let Apollo 11 land on the moon in 1969 and, after Neil Armstrong's history—making moonwalk, let it return to Earth.
Yet throughout Mrs. Johnson's 33 years in NASA and for decades afterward, almost no one knew her name.
Mrs. Johnson was one of several hundred strictly educated, supremely capable yet largely unrecognized women who, well before the modem feminist movement, worked as NASA mathematicians. But it was not only her sex that kept her long unsung. For some years at midcentury, the black women were subjected to a double segregation (隔离)：They were kept separate from the much large group of white women who in turn were segregated from the agency's male mathematicians and engineers.
Mrs. Johnson broke barriers at NASA. In old age, Mrs. Johnson became the most celebrated of black women who served as mathematicians for the space agency. Their story was told in the 2016 Hollywood film "Hidden Figures," which was nominated for three Oscars, including best picture.
In 2017, NASA dedicated a building in her honor. That year, The Washington Post described her as “the most high - profile of the computers” — “computers ” being the term originally used to describe Mrs. Johnson and her colleagues, much as “typewriters” were used in the 19th century to represent professional typists.
She “helped our nation enlarge the frontiers of space,” NASA's administrator, Jim Bridenstine, said in a statement on Monday, “even as she made huge steps that also opened doors for women and people of color in the universal human quest to explore space.”
As Mrs. Johnson herself was fond of saying, her tenure (任期) at Langley — from 1953 until her retirement in 1986 — was “a time when computers wore skirts.”
8. What is the function of the first paragraph?
A. To present the Apollo moon mission.
B. To stress Mrs. Johnson's contributions
C. To honour Neil Armstrong's moonwalk.
D. To mourn a great woman—Mrs. Johnson.
9. What does the underlined word "barriers” in Paragraph 4 refer to ?
A. Gender inequality and color line.
B. Mrs. Johnson's unrecognized talents.
C. The agency's male mathematicians and engineers.
D. The hardships before the modem feminist movement.
10. Why were Mrs. Johnson and her colleagues described as "computers"?
A. Because they used computers to keep their work secret.
B. Because they were the agency's human calculators'
C. Because computer systems engaged them deeply.
D. Because they opened a door to outer space.
11. What can we learn from Mrs. Johnson's experience?
A. Try things that may not work.
B. The world awaits our discovery.
C. Use knowledge to wipe out ignorance '
D. Never be limited by the labels attached by others.

答案