The Who, What, When, Where, & Why Space Quiz

Answer: Neil Armstrong

On July 21, 1969, Neil Armstrong took a "giant leap for mankind" when he descended onto the moon's surface.

His colleague, Buzz Aldrin, joined him shortly after and they spent just over two hours on the moon's surface. It had taken humankind just over eight years to reach this point from the first manned spaceflight.

Up until the time this quiz was written in August 2020, twelve astronauts, all men and all Americans, had walked on the moon.

Answer: Freedom 7

On May 5, 1961, a Mercury rocket carried Freedom 7 and Alan Shepard into space. That flight lasted 15 minutes and 28 seconds.

Ten years later, Shepard was the fifth man to walk on the moon: and the first to play golf there.

Answer: Venus

The average surface temperature is around 450 degrees Celsius. While logic might suggest that Mercury, the closest planet to the sun, would have a higher temperature, Mercury has no atmosphere.

To put that into perspective, the average temperature of the earth's surface is 14.9 degrees Celsius. The hottest recorded (so far) is 47 degrees.

Incidentally, Mercury and Venus are the only planets that do not have moons.

Answer: 2061

The comet is named after Edmond Halley, who first spotted it in 1705. It was last seen in 1986 and takes 75 or 76 years to return.

(If you are playing this quiz in 2062, send me a correction note and I'll change that to "last seen".

Answer: There is no atmosphere

That tagline from the original 1979 "Aliens" movie was totally correct.

Sound needs a substance to travel through. On earth that is air. Space has no atmosphere for sound. It is still possible for astronauts to talk to each other by radio on space walks.

Answer: Yuri Gagarin

Yuri Gagarin, a Soviet cosmonaut, became the first person in space when he orbited the Earth aboard Vostok 1 on April 12, 1961. That fight lasted just 108 minutes.

Gagarin, who had been an airforce pilot, made just one space flight. He died in a somewhat mysterious aircraft crash seven years later.

Much to the chagrin of the USA, the USSR had been the first nation into space. Before Gagarin, the competing nations had sent other animals into space, including a dog and a monkey.

Answer: $22million

In a National Public Radio interview in 2017, Pablo de Leon, director of the spacesuit laboratory at the University of North Dakota, said the suits were designed in the 1970s and should have been updated, but never had been. "The cost of a spacesuit originally was about $22 million. Building one from scratch right now can be as much as $250 million."

Incidentally, when 'walking' in space, astronauts/cosmonauts are tethered to their space ship with power and oxygen lines. US spacesuits have a small emergency jetpack, Russian suits do not. Cast adrift from those lines, life expectancy would be three to 12 hours, depending on the speed at which the oxygen reserve was consumed.

Answer: Baikonur, Kazakhstan

Baikonur became the launch site of space missions in 1955. After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Baikonur became part of the new republic of Kazakhstan. The launch site was then leased by the Russian government.

Between 1961 and 1991, more than 60 space launches had been carried out by the Soviet Union/Russia. By the time this quiz was written in August 2020, 553 people from 37 countries had traveled into space.

Answer: In 100 million years

The moon has no atmosphere, so there is no wind to erode the footsteps. It has no water either, so nothing to wash them away.

Since 1969, astronauts have left behind 400,000lbs of unwanted 'stuff'. In 1972, Apollo 16 astronaut Charles Duke left a framed photo of his family on the surface. Alan Shepard also lost two golf balls on the moon.

Answer: They don't know they are supposed to be separate

The technical term is "cold welding". Because there is nothing between the two pieces of metal, the atoms have no way of knowing they are supposed to be separate.

Space may be silent, but it is not empty. Around 2,000 active satellites orbit Earth at the moment, as well as also 3,000 dead ones. In addition, there are around 34,000 pieces of space junk larger than 10 centimetres.