单选题：Space is a dangerous place, not only because of meteors (流星)

Space is a dangerous place, not only because of meteors (流星) but also because of rays from the sun and other stars. The atmosphere again acts as our protective blanket on earth. Light gets through, and this is essential for plants to make the food that we eat. Heat, too, makes our environment endurable. Various kinds of rays come through the air from outer,space, but enor-mous quantities of radiation from the sun are screened off. As soon as men leave the atmosphere
they are exposed to this radiation but their spacesuits or the wails of their spacecra{ts, if they are inside, do prevent a lot of radiation damage.
Radiation is the greatest known danger to explorers in space. The unit of radiation is called "rem" ("雷姆").Scientists have reason to think thata man can put up with far more radiation than 0. 1 rem without being damaged；the figure of 60 rems has been agreed on. The trouble is that it is extremely difficult to be sure about radiation damage--a person may feel perfectly well, but the ceils of his or her sex organs may be damaged, and this will not be discovered until the birth of deformed (畸形的) children or even grandchildren. Missions o{ the Apollo flights have had to cross belts of high radiation and, during the outward and return journeys, the Apollo crew accumulated a larger amount of rems. So far, no dangerous amounts of radiation bare been reported, but the Apollo missions have been quite short. We simply do not know yet how men are going to get on when they spend weeks and months outside the protection of the atmosphere, working in a space laboratory. Drugs might help to decrease the damage done by radiation, but no really effective ones have been found so far.According to the first paragraph, the atmosphere is essential to man in that__ A．it protects him against the harmful rays from space
B．it provides sufficient light for plant growth
C．it supplies the heat necessary for human survival
D．it screens off the falling meteors