Interstellar Trivia Quiz

Answer: Cooper

Matthew McConaughey was cast as Joseph Cooper, the main protagonist in the movie "Interstellar". Joseph Cooper (aka "Coop") was a former NASA test pilot who lived on a farm with his two children (son and daughter) and his father-in-law (John Lithgow). Joseph Cooper's wife had passed away some time before the movie's main story-line.

Answer: blight and famine

Joseph Cooper and his family were struggling to keep crops alive during a planet-wide blight. The composition of the Earth's atmosphere had been changed to a point where the nitrogen levels were too high and oxygen levels were too low. This slowly led to the extinction of many species of plants and animals, especially those that humanity relied on for food.

The blight also left the planet susceptible to intense dust storms which caused numerous respiratory ailments. The blight and resulting famine threatened to wipe out all life on Earth, including humans, within the next few generations, if a solution was not found.

Answer: Murphy

In the opening scenes of "Interstellar", Murphy Cooper had suspicions of a supernatural presence in her bedroom. This "ghost" would interact with objects, including dust, that were in the room in an attempt to leave messages for both Cooper and Murphy.

The role of Murphy Cooper was portrayed by three different actresses. Mackenzie Foy played Murphy as a child, Jessica Chastain played Murphy as a middle aged adult and Ellen Burstyn played an elderly Murphy. Most people interpret Murphy's Law to mean "anything that can go wrong will go wrong". Because of this, Murphy hated her name, but her father tried to reassure her that the name really meant "whatever can happen, will happen".

Answer: Michael Caine and Anne Hathaway

In "Interstellar", citizens of the United States had given up their for support for NASA, going as far as to erase and defame the history of the organization. Discussion about NASA and its history was even banned in public schools. However, NASA would continue to operate as a covert government agency.

Joseph Cooper discovered a set of coordinates via Murphy's "ghost". When he went to investigate the coordinates, he ended up getting tazed by a robotic security guard. Cooper and Murphy were then brought in to the facility, which turned out to be the secret headquarters of NASA. There he met astronaut Amelia Brand (Anne Hathaway) and her father Professor John Brand (Michael Caine), the director of NASA who had worked with Cooper in the past. NASA ended up recruiting Cooper to become part of a critical mission that would potentially save humanity from extinction.

Answer: Saturn

NASA discovered a wormhole near the planet Saturn approximately 48 years prior to the beginning of the movie, which opened up the possibility of finding another habitable planet to colonize. The wormhole seemed to just randomly appear and is implied that it was placed there by an advanced civilization attempting to save humanity from extinction.

Answer: The Lazarus missions

Approximately 10 years prior to the beginning of the main story-line of "Interstellar", NASA had launched the Lazarus missions. The objective of the Lazarus missions were to send 12 astronauts to 12 potential Earth-like planets that were discovered on the other side of the Saturn wormhole. NASA had hoped that the Lazarus astronauts would send data back to Earth in order to find suitable planet to migrate to and/or colonize.

While waiting on word from the Lazarus astronauts, NASA was preparing for both scenarios should a suitable world have been found. The first scenario (Plan A) involved constructing a huge space station that would be able to transport surviving humans to the colony planet. The second scenario (Plan B) involved sending human embryos to the colony planet in order to start repopulating the human race.

Answer: Endurance

The data NASA retrieved from the Lazarus missions set up the subsequent Endurance mission. The objective of the Endurance mission was to send a second wave of astronauts through the wormhole to conduct a more thorough investigation of planets NASA felt were promising candidates for migration and/or colonization.

The Endurance itself was a navigable space station that included two sleek space shuttles (Rangers), two cargo landers and a large circular main component containing 12 rectangular modules. The Endurance station rotated during travel to provide artificial gravity for the astronauts. The Endurance was also equipped with cryo-beds which the astronauts used to hibernate during their long trip from Earth to Saturn.

Answer: TARS

TARS and CASE were large identical rectangular shaped robots that accompanied the astronauts on the Endurance mission. They had been originally built for war, but were eventually reprogrammed to serve NASA.

TARS was the robot who tazed Cooper when he found NASA's headquarters. TARS was programmed with a sarcastic personality which Cooper found to be annoying. CASE was already aboard the orbiting Endurance station when the astronauts arrived from Earth. Actors Bill Irwin and Josh Stewart provided the voices for TARS and CASE respectively.

Answer: Gargantua

Miller's planet and Mann's planet orbited around a black hole named Gargantua. The close proximity of the planets to Gargantua's intense gravity caused both of them to experience time dilation on their surfaces. One hour spent on the Miller planet surface was said in the film to be equal to seven years on Earth as well as on board the Endurance station.

A third candidate planet (Edmund's planet) had been discovered orbiting around a main sequence star about another year's travel away from Gargantua. Edmund's planet was the farthest away from the point in space where the Endurance station exited the wormhole and exploring the two planets orbiting Gargantua were given precedence.

Answer: It was completely covered in water.

Cooper, CASE, Amelia and an astronaut named Doyle (Wes Bentley) took one of the Rangers down to Miller's planet. They landed onto a surface that was completely covered by water and the astronauts discovered parts of Laura Miller's Lazarus mission spacecraft floating on the surface. As the astronauts were attempting to retrieve data from the wreckage a huge tidal wave struck the group, killing Doyle before he could get back into the Ranger.

Cooper, CASE and Amelia escaped Miller's planet and returned to the Endurance station, which TARS and another astronaut named Romilly (David Gyasi) had kept running for more than 23 Earth years while Cooper's group was on the surface.

Answer: Matt Damon

Upon returning from Miller's planet, Cooper decided that the astronauts should investigate Mann's planet next. The surface of Mann's planet looked to be rocky and mountainous with a climate that looked similar to what someone might expect to see in Antarctica.

The astronauts soon found the world's explorer Dr. Mann (Matt Damon), who was the leading astronaut of the Lazarus missions, hibernating in a bunker.

Answer: No

Dr. Mann claimed that his planet, despite its outward appearance, contained hydrocarbons on its "surface" and would be a suitable world to start building a colony. Upon hearing this, Cooper had the robot CASE bring down a cargo lander from the Endurance station to begin the colonization process.

However, the data presented to the astronauts by Dr. Mann was falsified so that someone would be sent to his world giving him the opportunity to return to Earth. The surface of Mann's planet was not made of rock, but frozen ammonia clouds which surrounded the planet and prevented anyone from reaching its real surface. The exterior of the planet was much too cold and the atmosphere was too toxic for it to be usable as an Earth colony. In addition to lying about the planet. Dr. Mann had disassembled his robot companion KIPP (same model as TARS and CASE) and rigged it to explode which killed Romilly when he attempted to extract data from it.

Answer: Tesseract

Dr. Mann attempted to kill Cooper and escape his planet in one of the Rangers. Due to his unhinged emotional state, Dr. Mann did not ensure that he had securely docked the Ranger to the Endurance station. When Dr. Mann attempted to open the airlock, he triggered an explosion that damaged the station and sent it spinning uncontrollably towards the planet's atmosphere. After using the cargo lander to stabilize the Endurance, the station ended up drifting towards the black hole and did not have enough fuel left to reach the third planet (Edmund's planet) under its own power.

Cooper and TARS soon developed a plan to take advantage of the black hole's gravity to slingshot Amelia and the Endurance station out towards Edmund's planet. To balance out the change in mass needed to perform this maneuver, Cooper and TARS detached the remaining cargo lander and Ranger shuttle from the Endurance sending both of the smaller ships hurtling towards Gargantua. Cooper and TARS were both saved at the last moment by the same advanced civilization responsible for the Saturn wormhole, who placed them into a four-dimensional structure called a tesseract.

Answer: wristwatch

The tesseract gave Joseph Cooper the ability to interact with people across time using gravity as a communication device. Cooper soon realized that he was the "ghost" in Murphy's room earlier in the film. By interacting with his daughter's wristwatch, Cooper was able to send a message via Morse Code to his daughter in the past.

This message contained data that Cooper and TARS collected during their close encounter with the black hole before they were rescued. Murphy would go on use this data to solve a crucial equation needed to save humanity.

Answer: No

Cooper and TARS were eventually sent back to the Solar System, where they emerged just outside of the wormhole near Saturn. They were both rescued and brought to a large rotating space station named Cooper Station, which was designed to ferry all surviving humans from the Earth to the colony planet. A replica of Cooper's farmhouse on Earth had been constructed aboard the station.

Cooper was more than 120 years old when he was rescued, but due to the time dilation caused by Gargantua, he looked only a few years older than when he had left. Cooper had been rescued just in time to say goodbye to Murphy at her death bed aboard the station. Cooper later decided to "borrow" a spaceship and went back through the wormhole to seemingly join Amelia who had begun setting up a colony on Edmund's planet, which was shown to be the most Earth-like of the three worlds.