40 Space Trivia Questions for Kids
The easiest space questions in the game, picked for younger players. Every one comes with the answer and a short explanation of why it is right.
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Easy Space Questions and Answers
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Which mission first landed humans on the Moon?
Apollo 11
NASA's Apollo 11 mission made the first crewed lunar landing in July 1969.
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In which lunar sea did Apollo 11 land?
Sea of Tranquility (Mare Tranquillitatis)
Armstrong and Aldrin set down on 20 July 1969 in the Sea of Tranquility, and named the spot Tranquility Base. The Moon's dark 'seas' hold no water at all: they are vast plains of basalt left by lava floods more than three billion years ago.
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In what year did Apollo 11 land humans on the Moon?
1969
Apollo 11 landed in 1969, fulfilling President John F. Kennedy's goal of sending humans to the Moon and returning them safely before the decade ended.
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The main asteroid belt lies between which two planets?
Mars and Jupiter
The main asteroid belt occupies the region between Mars and Jupiter. Jupiter's strong gravity helped prevent the material there from forming another planet.
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Who was the first American to orbit Earth?
John Glenn
John Glenn circled Earth three times aboard Friendship 7 on 20 February 1962. Alan Shepard and Gus Grissom had flown before him in 1961, but those were suborbital hops that went up and straight back down.
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An astronomical unit is approximately how far?
About 150 million kilometers
One astronomical unit, or AU, is the average distance between Earth and the Sun: about 149.6 million kilometers. Astronomers use it for distances within planetary systems.
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What is the standard cosmological model called in which the universe expands from an early hot, dense state?
Big Bang
The Big Bang model describes an early hot, dense universe expanding and cooling; it is not an explosion from one central place.
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What is the boundary around a black hole beyond which light cannot escape called?
Event horizon
The event horizon marks the point of no return around a black hole. An accretion disk is the hot material that may orbit outside it, while the singularity is predicted to lie deeper inside.
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Which constellation is marked by five bright stars forming a rough zigzag?
Cassiopeia
Five prominent stars in Cassiopeia form a distinctive W or M shape.
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What is a typical comet nucleus made of?
Frozen gases, rock, and dust
A comet nucleus is a solid mixture of frozen gases, rock, and dust. When heated near the Sun, it can produce a coma and tail.
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In which direction does a comet's ion tail point?
Away from the Sun
A comet’s ion tail points away from the Sun because the solar wind carries charged gas outward. Unlike the dust tail, it usually points almost directly away from the Sun even as the comet moves along its orbit.
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Which planet is third from the Sun?
Earth
Earth is the third planet outward from the Sun.
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Which planet in the Solar System is not named after a Greek or Roman god?
Earth
Earth's name is Germanic and simply means ground or soil. Every other planet carries the name of a Roman deity, apart from Uranus, which kept its Greek one.
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A star's brightness dips a fraction of a percent every few days, then recovers. What does that reveal?
A planet crossing in front of it
This is called the transit method: the depth of the dip reveals the planet's size relative to its star, and the interval between dips gives its orbital period. NASA's Kepler telescope used the technique to confirm more than 2,000 exoplanets before retiring in 2018.
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Who was the first human to travel into space?
Yuri Gagarin
Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space on April 12, 1961, completing one orbit of Earth aboard Vostok 1.
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Who was the first person to step onto the Moon?
Neil Armstrong
Neil Armstrong stepped onto the lunar surface during Apollo 11 on July 20, 1969. Buzz Aldrin followed him shortly afterward.
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Who performed the first spacewalk?
Alexei Leonov
Leonov left the Voskhod 2 spacecraft in 1965 for the first extravehicular activity. Ed White performed the first American spacewalk later that year.
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Who became the first woman in space?
Valentina Tereshkova
Tereshkova flew aboard Vostok 6 in 1963. Sally Ride later became the first American woman in space, while Savitskaya was the first woman to perform a spacewalk.
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In which galaxy is our solar system?
Milky Way
The Sun is one of a few hundred billion stars in the Milky Way, a barred spiral roughly 100,000 light years across, sitting about halfway out from the centre. The pale band that crosses a dark night sky is the massed light of the galaxy's own disc, seen edge on from inside it.
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A satellite in geostationary orbit takes approximately how long to orbit Earth?
24 hours
A geostationary satellite orbits once in about 24 hours, matching Earth's rotation. When positioned above the equator, it appears to hover over one longitude.
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The Great Red Spot is a giant storm on which planet?
Jupiter
The Great Red Spot is a long-lived anticyclonic storm in Jupiter's atmosphere. It has been observed for centuries, although its size has changed.
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About how long is Halley's Comet's average orbital period?
About 76 years
Halley's Comet returns to the inner Solar System about every 75 to 76 years. Its next perihelion after 1986 is expected in 2061.
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Which planet has the hottest average surface temperature?
Venus
Venus has the hottest average surface temperature of any planet, reaching about 465°C (870°F). Its thick carbon-dioxide atmosphere traps heat through an intense greenhouse effect.
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In what year was the Hubble Space Telescope launched?
1990
The Space Shuttle Discovery deployed Hubble in April 1990. Its position above most of Earth's atmosphere lets it take exceptionally sharp images in visible and other wavelengths.
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What element is produced when the Sun fuses hydrogen in its core?
Helium
The Sun's main energy-producing chain combines hydrogen nuclei into helium. A small amount of mass is converted into energy during the process.
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Which space telescope was designed mainly to observe infrared light?
James Webb Space Telescope
The James Webb Space Telescope works in the infrared, which lets it see through dust clouds and catch light from the universe's earliest galaxies, stretched to longer wavelengths by the expansion of space. A five-layer sunshield the size of a tennis court keeps it cold enough to register those faint signals.
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In what year was the James Webb Space Telescope launched?
2021
The James Webb Space Telescope launched on December 25, 2021. It observes mainly infrared light and operates near the Sun-Earth L2 point.
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Which gas is the main component of Jupiter's atmosphere?
Hydrogen
Jupiter's atmosphere is mostly molecular hydrogen, with helium making up most of the remainder. Trace compounds such as ammonia help create its visible cloud bands.
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Which moon is the most volcanically active body in the solar system?
Io
Jupiter's gravity flexes Io as it orbits, and the friction of that constant kneading keeps hundreds of volcanoes erupting. Some throw sulphur plumes hundreds of kilometres above the surface.
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The Kuiper Belt lies where in the Solar System?
Beyond Neptune
The Kuiper Belt is a broad region of icy bodies beyond Neptune’s orbit. It contains dwarf planets such as Pluto and is a remnant of the Solar System’s formation.
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Which is the largest structure humans have ever assembled in space?
International Space Station
The International Space Station spans roughly the area of a football field including its solar arrays, and it took more than thirty assembly flights to build. It has been continuously crewed since November 2000.
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Which planet is the largest in our Solar System?
Jupiter
Jupiter is the largest planet by both diameter and mass. Its volume is large enough to contain more than 1,300 Earths.
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What is the largest moon in the Solar System?
Ganymede
Ganymede, which orbits Jupiter, is larger in diameter than the planet Mercury, although it has much less mass. It is also the only moon known to have its own magnetic field.
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What creates most lunar craters?
High-speed impacts
Nearly every crater on the Moon was punched out by rock arriving at tens of thousands of miles an hour. With almost no atmosphere to burn up incoming debris, no rain or wind to erode the scars and no plate tectonics to recycle the crust, the surface keeps a record of impacts billions of years old.
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Which gas makes up most of Mars's atmosphere?
Carbon dioxide
Mars's thin atmosphere is about 95 percent carbon dioxide. The low pressure and cold conditions make liquid water unstable on much of the surface today.
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How long does Mercury take to complete one orbit around the Sun?
88 Earth days
Mercury circles the Sun in 88 Earth days, the shortest year of any planet. It turns on its axis once every 59 Earth days, three rotations for every two orbits, and the two motions combine so that a single sunrise-to-sunrise day on Mercury lasts about 176 Earth days, or two full Mercury years.
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What is a space rock called after it survives the atmosphere and reaches the ground?
Meteorite
Most meteorites are fragments chipped off asteroids in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, though a small number have been traced back to impacts on the Moon or Mars.
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The Moon's surface gravity is approximately what fraction of Earth's?
One-sixth
The Moon's surface gravity is about 16.5 percent of Earth's, or roughly one-sixth. Astronauts could therefore make unusually long, slow-looking jumps on the Moon.
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What is the closest star to the Sun?
Proxima Centauri
Proxima Centauri is the nearest individual star to the Sun, about 4.24 light-years away.
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On which planet is Olympus Mons located?
Mars
Olympus Mons is a huge shield volcano on Mars and is the tallest known planetary volcano in the Solar System. Its broad shape comes from repeated, low-viscosity lava flows.
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