Space trivia questions: 60 with answers

Somebody in the back seat says Venus spins backward, so the Sun rises there in the west, and the rest of the passengers refuse to believe it. Space trivia does that: the true answers sound like dares.

Here are 60 space trivia questions with answers, from easy to hard, written to be read out loud: the planets and their moons, the Sun and the stars, the missions and the people who flew them. Read the question, let everyone answer, then read the answer. Under every third answer there is a line of story.

A ten-question card for one round

Read these ten in order if you only have time for one round. The last one is the tiebreaker.

1. Who was the first person to walk on the Moon? Neil Armstrong.
2. Which planet is often called the Red Planet? Mars.
3. Which is the only planet in our solar system named after a female god? Venus.
4. Which Soviet cosmonaut became the first woman in space, in 1963? Valentina Tereshkova.
5. What was the name of the dog that became the first animal to orbit Earth, in 1957? Laika.
6. Which planet is the only one in our solar system with an average density less than water? Saturn.
7. Which moon of Saturn is the only moon in the solar system with a thick atmosphere? Titan.
8. Which spacecraft became the first human-made object to reach interstellar space, in 2012? Voyager 1.
9. Which red supergiant star marks a shoulder of the constellation Orion? Betelgeuse.
10. How many hexagonal segments make up the main mirror of the James Webb Space Telescope? 18. Closest number wins.

Easy

1. Who was the first person to walk on the Moon? Neil Armstrong.
2. Who was the second person to walk on the Moon, in July 1969? Buzz Aldrin.
3. Which planet is often called the Red Planet? Mars. The Romans named Mars for their god of war because its reddish color was reminiscent of blood.
4. Which planet is home to the giant storm known as the Great Red Spot? Jupiter.
5. Which planet orbits closest to the Sun? Mercury.
6. What is the name of the galaxy our solar system belongs to? The Milky Way. Earth sits along one of the galaxy's spiral arms, about halfway from the center.
7. Which object holds about 99.8 percent of all the mass in our solar system? The Sun.
8. What do we call a space rock that survives its fall through the atmosphere and hits the ground? A meteorite.
9. Which former ninth planet was reclassified as a dwarf planet in 2006? Pluto. Its largest moon, Charon, is about half the size of Pluto itself.
10. What do we call it when the Moon passes between the Sun and Earth and blocks the Sun's light? A solar eclipse.
11. What do we call a place in space where gravity is so strong that not even light can escape? A black hole.
12. Which constellation, named after a hunter in Greek myth, has a famous belt of three bright stars? Orion. The three belt stars look much alike from Earth, but the middle one, Alnilam, lies hundreds of light-years farther away than the other two.
13. Which is the only planet in our solar system whose English name does not come from Greek or Roman mythology? Earth.
14. Which planet is named after the Roman god of the sea? Neptune.
15. Which is the only planet in our solar system named after a female god? Venus. From Earth, Venus is the brightest object in the night sky after the Moon.
16. What do we call a cosmic snowball of frozen gases, rock and dust that grows a glowing tail near the Sun? A comet.
17. The main asteroid belt lies between the orbits of which two planets? Mars and Jupiter.
18. Which orbiting laboratory received its first long-term crew in November 2000? International Space Station. The station makes 16 orbits of Earth every 24 hours, passing through 16 sunrises and sunsets.
19. Which giant space telescope launched on Christmas Day 2021? James Webb Space Telescope.
20. Despite its name, what does a light-year measure? Distance.

Medium

21. What is the name of the giant Martian volcano that is the largest volcano in the solar system? Olympus Mons. Its base covers an area about as large as the state of Arizona.
22. Which Soviet cosmonaut became the first woman in space, in 1963? Valentina Tereshkova.
23. Who became the first American woman in space, aboard the shuttle Challenger in 1983? Sally Ride.
24. Which astronaut became the first American to orbit Earth, in 1962? John Glenn. He circled Earth three times in a spacecraft he named Friendship 7.
25. What was the name of the dog that became the first animal to orbit Earth, in 1957? Laika.
26. What was the name of the Apollo 11 lunar module that landed on the Moon? Eagle.
27. What giant NASA rocket launched the Apollo astronauts toward the Moon? Saturn V. Its first crewed launch, Apollo 8 in December 1968, carried the first humans to orbit the Moon.
28. Which planet is the only one in our solar system with an average density less than water? Saturn.
29. Which planet spins tipped on its side, at nearly a right angle to the plane of its orbit? Uranus.
30. Which moon of Saturn is the only moon in the solar system with a thick atmosphere? Titan. Titan has rain, rivers, lakes and seas of liquid methane and ethane.
31. Which famous meteor shower peaks every August? The Perseids.
32. Which Italian astronomer discovered Jupiter's four largest moons in 1610? Galileo Galilei.
33. On which rocky planet would the Sun rise in the west, because the planet spins backward? Venus. One spin of Venus takes 243 Earth days, longer than its 225-day trip around the Sun.
34. About how long does it take light from the Sun to reach Earth? About 8 minutes.
35. What is the nearest major galaxy to our own Milky Way? Andromeda.
36. Which American astronomer showed in the 1920s that millions of galaxies exist beyond the Milky Way? Edwin Hubble. In 1929, Hubble showed that the farther away a galaxy is, the faster it is moving away from us, key evidence that the universe is expanding.
37. Which NASA rover landed in Jezero Crater on Mars in February 2021? Perseverance.
38. What is the name of the gold-plated copper disk of sounds and images carried by both Voyager probes? The Golden Record.
39. What is the brightest star in the night sky, also known as the Dog Star? Sirius. Its faint companion, Sirius B, is a white dwarf about 10,000 times fainter than Sirius itself.
40. What is the proper name of the North Star? Polaris.

Hard

41. Which Kuiper Belt object, nicknamed Ultima Thule at the time, did NASA's New Horizons fly past on New Year's Day 2019? Arrokoth.
42. Which dwarf planet, discovered in 2005, helped trigger the debate that led to Pluto's reclassification? Eris. Eris is named for the ancient Greek goddess of discord and strife.
43. Which of Jupiter's four Galilean moons orbits closest to the planet? Io.
44. Which spacecraft became the first human-made object to reach interstellar space, in 2012? Voyager 1.
45. What name was given to the famous 1990 Voyager 1 photo that shows Earth as a tiny speck? Pale Blue Dot. Voyager 1 took it on Feb. 14, 1990, about 3.7 billion miles (6 billion km) from the Sun.
46. What is the only large moon in the solar system that orbits backward, against its planet's spin? Triton.
47. Which small, icy moon of Saturn sprays geyser-like jets of water vapor and ice into space? Enceladus.
48. What was the name of the European lander that made the first-ever landing on a comet, in 2014? Philae. It touched down on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, delivered by its mother ship, Rosetta.
49. What is the name of the vast canyon system on Mars, the largest canyon in the solar system? Valles Marineris.
50. Which red supergiant star marks a shoulder of the constellation Orion? Betelgeuse.
51. What is the name of the supermassive black hole at the center of the Milky Way? Sagittarius A*. It has about 4 million times the mass of our Sun.
52. What name is given to the giant spherical shell of icy objects thought to surround our solar system? The Oort Cloud.
53. Which planet was the first to be located through mathematical predictions rather than by observing the sky? Neptune.
54. Which astronomer discovered the planet Uranus in 1781? William Herschel. Herschel at first thought the new object was either a comet or a star.
55. Which American astronomer discovered Pluto in 1930? Clyde Tombaugh.
56. Who commanded Apollo 17, the last Apollo mission to land on the Moon, in December 1972? Eugene Cernan.
57. What was the name of the spacecraft in which Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space? Vostok 1. Gagarin did not land inside his capsule; he ejected and came down by parachute.
58. Which asteroid moonlet did NASA's DART spacecraft deliberately crash into in September 2022? Dimorphos.
59. How many hexagonal segments make up the main mirror of the James Webb Space Telescope? 18.
60. What was the first planet discovered orbiting a Sun-like star, identified in 1995? 51 Pegasi b. In the three decades since, astronomers have confirmed more than 6,000 exoplanets.

Where these questions come from

The game has no space pack yet, so these questions were written for this page, and every answer was checked against the source named here. Most of them are NASA's and the European Space Agency's own pages:

• NASA: apollo 11, former astronaut edwin buzz aldrin, space station facts and figures, 60 years ago john glenn the first american to orbit the earth aboard friendship 7, 60 years ago the first animal in orbit, apollo 8, pluto past future, apollo 17, april 1961 first human entered space
• NASA Science: mars facts, jupiter facts, mercury facts, galaxies, sun facts, meteors meteorites, pluto facts, types, black holes, discovering the universe through the constellation orion, earth facts, neptune facts, venus facts, comets, asteroids, webb, what is a light year, saturn facts, uranus facts, titan, moons, messier 31, edwin hubble, mars 2020 perseverance, voyager golden record overview, astronomers use hubble to weigh dog stars companion, arrokoth 2014 mu69, eris, voyager 1, voyager 1s pale blue dot, triton, enceladus, oort cloud, dart, exoplanets
• Museum of Science, Boston
• NASA JPL: pia25223 olympus mons, rosettas philae makes historic first landing on a comet
• Guinness World Records
• Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum
• Armagh Observatory and Planetarium
• NASA Science (Astronomy Picture of the Day): apod 1996 september 02 sirius the brightest star in the night, apod 2011 may 14 the little dipper, apod 1995 august 03 io a volcanic moon
• ESA Science & Technology

The questions stay away from numbers that change often, like how many moons a planet has, so they should still be right next year. Answers checked on 25 October 2026.

Questions people ask

What are good space trivia questions? Ones with a short answer and a reason people argue about: which planet spins on its side, who was the first woman in space, how long sunlight takes to reach us.

Are these space trivia questions up to date? They were checked on 25 October 2026, and they avoid counts that keep changing, such as the number of known moons.

How do you play space trivia out loud? One person reads, everyone answers before the answer is read, and the score is kept where everyone can hear it. Ten questions make a round.

If nobody wants to read

Somebody has to hold the list, and that person never gets to answer. Quizy can take that job. It is an AI quiz host that reads each question out loud, listens for the answer and keeps score, so the person who knows every moon of Jupiter gets to play too. It needs a signal and a room where people can talk. .

Tonight

Read question one out loud, and let whoever looked up at the sky most recently go first.