Space Records & Firsts

27 questions · Answers revealed below each question · Print this set

1.Who first broke the sound barrier in freefall from the stratosphere, in 2012?
- A. Dennis Tito
- B. Joseph Kittinger
- C. Felix Baumgartner
- D. Alan Shepard
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Felix Baumgartner
Did you know? Baumgartner jumped from about 39 kilometers in October 2012.
2.Which May meteor shower shares Halley's Comet as its parent?
- A. the Quadrantids
- B. the Eta Aquariids
- C. the Geminids
- D. the Perseids
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the Eta Aquariids
Did you know? Halley's dust also feeds October's Orionids.
3.Who became the first woman to walk in space, in July 1984?
- A. Svetlana Savitskaya
- B. Valentina Tereshkova
- C. Kathryn Sullivan
- D. Sally Ride
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Svetlana Savitskaya
Did you know? Savitskaya stepped outside Salyut 7 in July 1984.
4.Which is the largest confirmed impact crater on Earth?
- A. the Chicxulub crater
- B. the Sudbury Basin
- C. Barringer Crater
- D. the Vredefort Dome
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the Vredefort Dome
Did you know? South Africa's Vredefort structure spans some 300 kilometers.
5.What is the Sun's figure-eight annual path in the sky called?
- A. the meridian
- B. the saros
- C. the analemma
- D. the ecliptic
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the analemma
Did you know? Photographers stitch the analemma from year-long exposures.
6.Who made China's first spacewalk, in 2008?
- A. Zhai Zhigang
- B. Sergei Korolev
- C. Liu Boming
- D. Yang Liwei
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Zhai Zhigang
Did you know? Zhai stepped outside the Shenzhou 7 capsule in September 2008.
7.Which 21st-century total lunar eclipse ran longest, in July 2018?
- A. The January 2000 eclipse, about 88 minutes
- B. The July 2018 eclipse, about 103 minutes total
- C. The April 2014 eclipse, about 78 minutes
- D. The May 2021 eclipse, about 15 minutes
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The July 2018 eclipse, about 103 minutes total
Did you know? The 2018 "Blood Moon" was the century's longest so far.
8.What is the maximum duration of a total solar eclipse?
- A. About 30 minutes
- B. About 7.5 minutes
- C. About 2 hours
- D. About 1 second
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About 7.5 minutes
Did you know? Only narrow eclipse tracks approach the 7.5-minute maximum.
9.Which craft first flew through a comet's tail, in 1985?
- A. Rosetta
- B. Philae
- C. ISEE-3/ICE
- D. Giotto
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ISEE-3/ICE
Did you know? The repurposed ISEE-3 sliced through Giacobini-Zinner's tail.
10.Which planet has the longest day-night cycle, at 176 Earth days?
- A. Venus
- B. Neptune
- C. Mercury
- D. Mars
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Mercury
Did you know? Mercury's slow spin stretches one solar day to 176 Earth days.
11.Which meteor shower peaks in early January?
- A. the Quadrantids
- B. the Geminids
- C. the Perseids
- D. the Leonids
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the Quadrantids
Did you know? The Quadrantids radiate from a now-obsolete constellation.
12.Who was the first American woman to walk in space, in October 1984?
- A. Sally Ride
- B. Svetlana Savitskaya
- C. Kathryn Sullivan
- D. Mae Jemison
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Kathryn Sullivan
Did you know? Sullivan floated outside Challenger months after Savitskaya.
13.Which crew drove the lunar rover farthest, about 36 kilometers total?
- A. Apollo 15
- B. Apollo 16
- C. Apollo 11
- D. Apollo 17
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Apollo 17
Did you know? Apollo 17's rover logged the longest lunar drives.
14.What is earthshine?
- A. A green tint at the Moon's rim
- B. Light from the full Earth seen from the Moon
- C. Sunlight bounced from Earth onto the Moon's dark side
- D. Glow from Earth's auroras
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Sunlight bounced from Earth onto the Moon's dark side
Did you know? Earthshine faintly lights the new Moon's dark face.
15.Who was the first woman to command the International Space Station, in 2007?
- A. Sally Ride
- B. Peggy Whitson
- C. Svetlana Savitskaya
- D. Eileen Collins
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Peggy Whitson
Did you know? Whitson took the station's command in October 2007.
16.Which cosmonaut logged the most total days in space, about 878?
- A. Valeri Polyakov
- B. Gennady Padalka
- C. Yuri Gagarin
- D. Alexei Leonov
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Gennady Padalka
Did you know? Padalka's five missions top the all-time time-in-space list.
17.Which spacecraft was the first to orbit Mercury, in 2011?
- A. BepiColombo
- B. Mariner 10
- C. Dawn
- D. MESSENGER
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MESSENGER
Did you know? MESSENGER circled Mercury from 2011 to 2015.
18.Which 1972 photo was the first widely shared full-Earth portrait?
- A. the Pale Blue Dot
- B. Earthrise
- C. the Blue Marble
- D. the Hubble Deep Field
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the Blue Marble
Did you know? Apollo 17's crew shot the Blue Marble en route to the Moon.
19.Who became the first Japanese person in space, in 1990?
- A. Toyohiro Akiyama
- B. Mamoru Mohri
- C. Marc Garneau
- D. Yang Liwei
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Toyohiro Akiyama
Did you know? The TV journalist flew to Mir aboard a Soyuz in December 1990.
20.Which is the largest single meteorite ever found on Earth?
- A. the Tunguska object
- B. the Hoba meteorite
- C. Barringer Crater's iron
- D. the Chelyabinsk meteorite
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the Hoba meteorite
Did you know? Namibia's Hoba meteorite weighs around 60 tonnes.
21.Which Apollo crew spent the longest time on the Moon, about 75 hours?
- A. Apollo 17
- B. Apollo 11
- C. Apollo 13
- D. Apollo 8
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Apollo 17
Did you know? Apollo 17's astronauts ran three moonwalks in December 1972.
22.Which spacecraft made the first successful flyby of Venus in 1962?
- A. Mariner 2
- B. Mariner 4
- C. Venera 7
- D. Pioneer 10
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Mariner 2
Did you know? Mariner 2 scanned Venus in December 1962.
23.How many spaceflights do Jerry Ross and Franklin Chang-Diaz share a record with?
- A. Nine
- B. Ten
- C. Five
- D. Seven
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Seven
Did you know? Both astronauts flew seven shuttle missions apiece.
24.What are the bright spots that flank the Sun in thin clouds called?
- A. halo sparks
- B. sundogs
- C. glory rings
- D. mock moons
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sundogs
Did you know? Sundogs are parhelia: sunlight refracted by ice crystals.
25.Who was the first woman to command a space shuttle mission, in 1999?
- A. Kathryn Sullivan
- B. Peggy Whitson
- C. Sally Ride
- D. Eileen Collins
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Eileen Collins
Did you know? Collins commanded the shuttle Columbia in July 1999.
26.Who became the first Black person in space, in 1980?
- A. Arnaldo Tamayo Mendez
- B. Mae Jemison
- C. Yang Liwei
- D. Guion Bluford
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Arnaldo Tamayo Mendez
Did you know? The Cuban cosmonaut flew to Salyut 6 aboard a Soyuz in 1980.
27.Who was the first woman of Indian origin to fly to space, in 1997?
- A. Rakesh Sharma
- B. Kalpana Chawla
- C. Mae Jemison
- D. Sunita Williams
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Kalpana Chawla
Did you know? Chawla flew aboard the space shuttle Columbia in 1997.

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