Man in Space, 9 for 10 Trivia Quiz

Answer: Artemis

In May 2019 NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine stated that the goal of the Artemis program was to land a pair of astronauts, one woman and one man, on the Moon by 2024, "the first woman and the next man". (The gender of the pilot who remains in the command module Orion was not specified.) Although lunar exploration was primary, Bridenstine also indicated that it would be an opportunity to work on approaches and technologies needed for a future Martian exploration. Namely, the Artemis program would include a tremendously powerful rocket called the Space Launch System (SLS) and a space station called Gateway to serve as an orbital outpost. NASA also revealed that the Artemis Generation spacesuits would be a vast improvement over the spacesuits in use at the time of the announcement (they were 40 years old, limited in movement, and few properly fit women's sizes.) Unlike the earlier Apollo lunar program of the 1960s-70s, NASA has conducted the Artemis program in conjunction with private businesses and with other nations' space programs, including those of Japan and Canada. One of the landing sites is the lunar South Pole.

Artemis in Greek mythology is goddess of the hunt, wild animals, childbirth, and, of course, the Moon. She is the twin sister of Apollo, for whom the original U.S. manned lunar missions of the 1960s-70s were named.

Answer: Saturn V

Saturn V was a human-rated super heavy-lift launch vehicle (SHLLV), meaning it could lift more than more than 50 tonnes (110,000 lbs) of payload into low Earth orbit (LEO), although actually in the Apollo program it achieved 140 tonnes (310,000 lbs). It was used by NASA between 1967 and 1973 not only for the Apollo missions to the Moon but also to launch Skylab, the first American space station. The Saturn V launched from the Kennedy Space Center with never a loss of payload or crew.

The Saturn V was an expendable rocket, meaning it wasn't meant to return to Earth, but instead lost components in stages. It remains the tallest, heaviest, and most powerful rocket, with history's heaviest payload. It has been the only rocket to take human beings beyond Earth's orbit.

Answer: Tereshkova

Valentina Vladimirovna Tereshkova (b. 1937) was the first woman in space, and at a mere 26 years of age the youngest female spacefarer ever. An engineer and a politician, Tereshkova remains the only woman to fly solo in space, sitting in a tin can called the 'Vostok 6' far above the world on 16 June 1963.

Svetlana Savitskaya (b. 1948) was the first woman to perform a spacewalk, in 1984 outside the 'Soyuz T-12'. Sally Ride (1951-2012) was the first American woman in space. Helen Sherman (b. 1963) was the first British citizen in space.

Answer: Ranger

The goal of NASA's Ranger program (1961-65) was not to land on the moon but to photograph it. Several of the Ranger missions were, in a word, duds. In 1962, Ranger 3 robotic spacecraft missed the Moon by 22,682 miles (39,793 km). A few months later Ranger 4 failed to deploy its solar panels, and it ran out of power in ten hours. Ranger 5 also had solar panel issues, and it, too, missed the Moon. Six months later, Ranger 6 successfully found its way to Moon--crashing into it after a month, never having sent any images due to camera failure. But NASA worked out the kinks, and Rangers 7, 8, and 9 (1964-65) were successful.

NASA's first Pioneer program (1958-1961) of unmanned space missions came to naught, but the second Pioneer program (1965-92) successfully sent probes to Jupiter and Saturn. Luna (1959-76) was the USSR's unmanned space program that returned the first images of the Far Side (formerly called the Dark Side) of the Moon and also landed the first spacecraft on the surface of the Moon (without crashing).

Answer: Office of Planetary Protection

Imagine if an alien virus, bacterium, or protozoan entered Earth's atmosphere -- would it have the potential to wipe out all life on the planet? NASA decided that it did not want this scenario to occur on Earth or on other planets or moons, and it created the Office of Planetary Protection. The OPP has assisted NASA in its policies to prevent contamination of other worlds by terrestrial germs and other organic materials. Specifically the OPP has helped create spacecraft that are sterile (or at least "low biological burden"), and it has taken measures likewise to prevent contamination of our planet from alien microscopic organisms.

The Space Force is for defense (i.e. war), not protection (i.e. public health).

The question of alien contamination was first raised at the International Astronautical Federation VIIth Congress in Rome in 1956 (before the launching of Sputnik in 1957). The U.S. National Academy of Sciences (NAS) created the ad hoc Committee on Contamination by Extraterrestrial Exploration (CETEX) in 1958 and recommendation sterilization of spacecraft. The UN Outer Space Treaty, ratified by the USA, USSR, and UK in 1967, and subsequently by other nation-states, includes provisions for planetary protection.

Answer: None of these

Nobody landed on the Moon between 1973 and 2020! Apollo 17 (1972) was the last manned mission to the Moon in the twentieth century. Missions afterward were all robotic, but even these tapered off; the last Soviet lunar probe was in 1976.

Japan launched a lunar probe called 'Hiten' in 1990, making it the first country other than the USA or the USSR to conduct an unmanned mission to the Moon. The probe's English name was 'Celestial Maiden'. Eventually, the European Union, China, India, Israel, and private industry got into the lunar exploration business, also unmanned. NASA created the Constellation Program in 2005 with the goal of another human lunar landing on the Moon by 2020, but by 2010 it was clearly non-viable and was scrapped. In 2018, the Artemis program revived NASA's hope to put humans on the Moon again (and eventually Mars).

Answer: Australia

Skylab, the first US space station, fell out of orbit in 1979, broke apart, and landed in the Indian Ocean. Well, mostly in the ocean; some of the debris landed in the Shire (county) of Esperance in the state of Western Australia. Esperance proceeded to fine NASA $400 for littering.

The agency never paid up. In truth, the shire never expected them to. In a local newspaper, the president of Esperance (and later president of the Esperance Bay Historical Society) said, "The littering fine was given by the ranger as a bit of a lark." He continued, "NASA declined to pay it and after three months, the infringement was written off, but it hasn't been forgotten!"

Answer: Uranus

Voyager 2 was launched from Cape Canaveral in 1977. By 1979 it reached Jupiter, and in 1981, Saturn. Then in 1986, the probe arrived within 50,600 miles (81,500 km) of the cloudtops of Uranus. Voyager revealed to us eleven new moons and two new rings, remarkably different from those of Saturn and Jupiter. Voyager 2 also measured a magnetic field misaligned with its rotational axis but stronger than that of Saturn.

Voyager 2 went on to Neptune in 1989, and then began interstellar travel during which it transmitted data back to Earth at about 160 bits per second. To this day, it has no trajectory. It carries a gold-plated disk containing audio and visual recordings of human beings and their culture (music, art, language) as well as scientific information--just in case an intelligent life form should stumble upon the humble spacecraft as it journeys through the stars.

Answer: Trekkies

Space shuttle OV-101 was originally to be named the 'Constitution'; construction began in 1974, and it was to be rolled out on Constitution Day (September 17), the federal observance of the adoption of the U.S. Constitution. But Trekkies, fans of the 'Star Trek' television series, wrote hundreds of thousands of letters to President Gerald Ford and asked him to direct NASA to call it the 'Enterprise', after the starship featured in the series. Impressed, Ford did just that. When the 'Enterprise' rolled out of the Rockwell International plant in Palmdale, California, in attendance were 'Star Trek' creator Gene Roddenberry along with actors Leonard Nimoy (Spock), DeForest Kelly (Dr. McCoy), Nichelle Nichols (Uhura), George Takei (Sulu), James Doohan (Scotty), Walter Koenig (Chekov) -- but not William Shatner (Captain Kirk).

Unfortunately, the 'Enterprise' lacked a heat shield, and while there were test flights and demonstration flights between 1977 and 2012, it never spent any time in space. It was supposed to be refitted for spaceflight, but the cost became prohibitive. It went on display at the Smithsonian in 2003 and in the Intrepid Museum in New York City in 2012.

Whovians (primarily in the USA) are dedicated to 'Dr Who'; Trubies dig 'True Blood'; and do I really need to tell you that Potterheads are fans of Harry Potter?

Answer: astronaut

Belgian-born science fiction writer J. H. Rosny coined the word 'astronautique' ("astronautics") in 1927 from from Greek 'astron' ("star") and Greek 'nautēs' ("sailor") to mean the art of travelling through outer space. Rosny modelled it from the word 'aéronautique', the art or science of flight. Words like 'spaceman' or 'space-farer' were more commonly used in English until the U.S. space program began in 1961 and popularized 'astronaut'.

The world's first human in space was Yuri Gargarin. The first American astronaut to enter outer space was millionaire Alan Shepard (who was also the second human in space). John Glenn was the first astronaut to orbit the Earth. Astronauts used to be exclusively sponsored and trained by governments, whether civilian or military, but since 2004 there have been commercial astronauts as well.