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Space Trivia Questions for Kids and Families
Blast off with thirty space trivia questions about planets, stars, telescopes and moonwalkers, from easy to hard, with answers and a fun fact for each.
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Easy space trivia questions for kids
1.What is the closest star to Earth?
The Sun. The next closest star, Proxima Centauri, is just over four light-years away.
2.Which planet is known as the Red Planet?
Mars. Rusty, iron-rich dust gives Mars its reddish color.
3.What causes day and night on Earth?
Earth spinning (rotating) on its axis. Earth makes one full spin about every 24 hours.
4.Which planet is farthest from the Sun?
Neptune. Neptune takes about 165 Earth years to go around the Sun once.
5.What do we call a named pattern of stars in the sky, such as Orion?
A constellation. Astronomers officially recognize 88 constellations.
6.What is a shooting star really?
A meteor: a bit of space rock burning up in Earth's air. If a piece survives the trip and lands on the ground, it is called a meteorite.
7.What do we call the curved path a planet or moon follows around another object in space?
An orbit. The technical word for an orbit's oval shape is an ellipse.
8.When a comet gets close to the Sun, what long glowing part does it grow?
A tail (most comets actually grow two). A comet's tails always point away from the Sun.
9.What do we call it when the Moon passes between the Sun and Earth and blocks the Sun's light?
A solar eclipse. Regular sunglasses are not safe for watching one; you need special eclipse glasses.
10.About how many days does it take Earth to travel once around the Sun?
About 365 days (one year). The extra quarter of a day adds up, so we add a leap day to the calendar about every four years.
11.What is it called when an astronaut goes outside a spacecraft while in space?
A spacewalk. Safety tethers clip spacewalkers to the spacecraft so they don't float away.
12.What do we call a person trained to travel and work in space?
An astronaut. The word comes from Greek words for star and sailor. Russian space travelers are called cosmonauts.
Medium space trivia questions
13.What did astronauts drive on the Moon during the last three Apollo missions?
A Lunar Roving Vehicle (a moon buggy). All three rovers were left behind on the Moon.
14.About how many days does the Moon take to go around Earth once?
About 27 days. The Moon spins at the same pace, so the same side of it always faces Earth.
15.Which giant space telescope, launched on Christmas Day 2021, studies the universe in infrared light?
The James Webb Space Telescope. Its main mirror, made of 18 gold-coated segments, is about 21 feet (6.5 meters) across.
16.What do we call the region between Mars and Jupiter where most asteroids orbit the Sun?
The asteroid belt (the main belt). All the asteroids put together have less mass than Earth's Moon.
17.Is a light-year a measure of time or of distance?
Distance. It is how far light travels in one year: about 6 trillion miles (9 trillion km).
18.What do we call a place in space whose pull is so strong that not even light can escape?
A black hole. Its boundary, the point of no return, is called the event horizon.
19.Which famous comet swings back past Earth about every 76 years?
Halley's Comet. It was last seen from Earth in 1986 and is due back in 2061.
20.Ocean tides are caused mainly by the pull of which object?
The Moon. Most coastlines get two high tides and two low tides on most days.
21.What is the brightest star in the night sky?
Sirius, the Dog Star. It belongs to the constellation Canis Major, the Greater Dog, and is about 8.6 light-years away.
22.What is the huge, super-bright explosion of a star called?
A supernova. A supernova can outshine its entire galaxy for days or even months.
Hard space trivia questions for adults
23.Mars has two small moons. One is called Phobos. What is the other one called?
Deimos. Astronomer Asaph Hall discovered both of them in August 1877.
24.Which NASA spacecraft, launched in 1977, crossed into interstellar space in 2012?
Voyager 1. It carries a golden record whose contents were picked by a team led by astronomer Carl Sagan.
25.Which astronomer, born in Poland, argued in a 1543 book that Earth travels around the Sun?
Nicolaus Copernicus. His book was called On the Revolutions, and his Sun-centered idea was controversial at the time.
26.What is the name of the doughnut-shaped region of icy objects at the outer edge of our solar system?
The Kuiper Belt. There may be millions of icy worlds out there.
27.What word describes the Moon when more than half of its face is lit, but not all of it?
Gibbous. The word comes from a Latin word meaning hump.
28.Which spiral galaxy, about 2.5 million light-years away, can be seen without a telescope on dark nights?
The Andromeda Galaxy. It is the only spiral galaxy besides our own that we can see with just our eyes.
29.In 2023, which country landed its Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft near the Moon's south pole?
India. Its lander, Vikram, was named after Vikram Sarabhai, the father of India's space program.
30.What is the name of the Sun's visible surface, the part we see from Earth?
The photosphere. Sunspots are patches on it that are slightly cooler than their surroundings.
Ways to use these space questions
Save these for a clear night in the backyard: read the easy ones while everyone's eyes adjust to the dark, then try the Moon-phase and Andromeda questions while you hunt for the real thing overhead. They also fit a road trip to a planetarium or space museum, a Moon-landing anniversary on July 20, or an eclipse-watching party while you wait for the shadow (eclipse glasses on). Teachers can open a solar system unit with the easy round and keep hard ones like Voyager 1, Deimos and the Kuiper Belt as bonus questions for kids who already know their planets by heart.
Play Space trivia together
Room Trivia has a whole space category with different questions: four answers to pick from, points for speed, and a scoreboard. Put it on a TV or laptop and everyone answers on their own phone. Free, with no app and no account.