50 Fun Facts About Spaceships

Which Space Shuttle orbiter, first planned as Constitution, was renamed after a fan letter campaign?

Enterprise got its name after Star Trek fans sent the White House hundreds of thousands of letters. It flew glide tests only: NASA dropped its plan to refit the orbiter for space.

Which Star Wars ship did Han Solo win from Lando Calrissian in a game of sabacc?

The Millennium Falcon is said to have been shaped after a hamburger, with an olive on the side for the cockpit. Han won it from Lando several years before the first film.

The Apollo 10 command and lunar modules were named after characters from which comic strip?

Peanuts supplied both call signs: the command module was Charlie Brown and the lunar module was Snoopy. Creator Charles Schulz drew mission artwork for NASA.

Which Apollo 11 lunar module carried Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin down to the Moon's surface?

Eagle touched down in the Sea of Tranquility on 20 July 1969 while Michael Collins circled overhead in the command module Columbia. Its descent stage was left behind on the Moon.

Which animals does Kirk's crew carry through time aboard a captured Klingon ship in Star Trek IV?

Humpback whales are extinct in Kirk's century, so the crew slingshot around the Sun to 20th-century San Francisco to fetch some. Only the whales can answer a probe wrecking Earth.

Which stray dog from Moscow became the first animal to orbit Earth, aboard Sputnik 2 in 1957?

Laika showed that a living creature could survive launch and weightlessness, though she died of overheating within hours. No way of bringing her home had been built.

Which Doctor Who ship is stuck looking like a British police box because its chameleon circuit broke?

The TARDIS is meant to blend in wherever it lands, but the Doctor's has been jammed in one shape since the first episode. Its name stands for Time And Relative Dimension In Space.

Which term for UFOs did the press coin after pilot Kenneth Arnold's 1947 sighting near Mount Rainier?

Flying saucer was probably a headline writer's phrase. Arnold himself reported nine shiny objects racing past the mountain at an estimated 1,200 miles per hour.

Which Soviet spacecraft carried Yuri Gagarin on the first human spaceflight in April 1961?

Vostok 1 circled Earth once in 108 minutes, and Gagarin did not land inside it. He ejected about 7 km up and parachuted to the ground separately.

Which NASA rocket launched all 24 astronauts who flew to the Moon in the Apollo programme?

Saturn V was the first rocket to carry humans beyond low Earth orbit. Thirteen were launched from Kennedy Space Center between 1967 and 1973.

Which spacecraft does Cooper pilot through a wormhole in Christopher Nolan's 2014 film Interstellar?

Endurance ages 23 years during one short landing, because time on the planet below runs far slower so close to a black hole.

Which space tug, named after a Joseph Conrad novel, carries Ripley's crew in the 1979 film Alien?

Nostromo was a late change of name for the ship, and its escape shuttle, Narcissus, borrows from a Conrad title as well. The crew of seven shares the tug with a cat called Jones.

Which starfighter does Luke Skywalker fly in the battle that destroys the first Death Star?

The X-wing is named for the shape its wings make when they open into attack position. Its pilots became Red squadron because blue markings clashed with bluescreen filming.

Which Star Trek villains travel in giant cube-shaped ships and absorb other species into a hive mind?

The Borg first appeared in the Next Generation episode Q Who, where one of their cubes proved more than a match for the Federation flagship. A single cube can take on a whole fleet.

Which Firefly-class transport ship does Captain Malcolm Reynolds name after a battle that ended in defeat?

Serenity is named after the Battle of Serenity Valley, the last action of the civil war that Mal and Zoe fought in. The ship is an old model that earns its keep hauling cargo.

Which ship does Zaphod Beeblebrox steal at its own unveiling in Douglas Adams's Hitchhiker's Guide series?

Heart of Gold runs on the Infinite Improbability Drive, and Zaphod was Galactic President when he made off with it. He used the office to get close to the ship.

Which NASA probe, launched in 1977, has travelled farther from Earth than any other spacecraft?

Voyager 1 crossed into interstellar space in August 2012, the first spacecraft ever to do so. It took 35 years of flight to get there.

Which famous space telescope did Space Shuttle Discovery carry into orbit in April 1990?

Hubble went up with a main mirror ground to the wrong shape, which blurred its view. Astronauts fitted corrective optics in 1993 to fix it.

Which capsule made the first privately operated orbital flight with astronauts aboard, in May 2020?

Crew Dragon carried Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken on the first crewed orbital launch from American soil since the shuttle retired in 2011. They named their capsule Endeavour.

Which NASA programme between Mercury and Apollo flew two-person capsules to practise docking?

Gemini is Latin for twins, a nod to its crew of two. Its astronauts stayed up for nearly 14 days, longer than a round trip to the Moon takes.

The ship Rocinante in the TV series The Expanse takes its name from the horse of which literary hero?

Don Quixote rides the horse Rocinante through Cervantes's novel of 1605 and 1615. The Expanse crew rename their ship early in the story, and it becomes the main setting.

Which computer controls the spacecraft Discovery One on its way to Jupiter in 2001: A Space Odyssey?

HAL 9000 runs most of the ship's operations and talks with a human-like personality. Three of the five astronauts aboard spend the trip in suspended animation.

Which animated sitcom follows a delivery crew who fly the Planet Express ship in the 31st century?

Futurama begins when pizza delivery boy Fry falls into a cryogenic pod just after midnight on 1 January 2000. He wakes to a job hauling parcels between planets.

Which British sitcom is set on a mining spacecraft where Dave Lister wakes as the last living human?

Red Dwarf opens with a radiation leak that kills everyone aboard while Lister sits out a punishment in suspended animation. He wakes three million years later.

Which ageing warship is being turned into a museum when the Cylons launch their surprise attack?

Galactica is fifty years old and midway through decommissioning, with much of its armour already stripped, when war breaks out again. Commander Adama takes it back into service.

In Close Encounters of the Third Kind, the alien mothership lands beside which American landmark?

Devils Tower haunts Roy Neary before he ever sees it. He keeps modelling the peak, even hauling dirt and bricks into his house to sculpt a giant replica.

Which Apollo 13 lunar module served as a lifeboat for three astronauts after an oxygen tank exploded?

Aquarius was designed to support two men for two days, but Mission Control improvised ways to make it keep three alive for four. Jim Lovell chose its name.

Which Mercury capsule carried John Glenn on the first American orbital spaceflight in February 1962?

Friendship 7 circled Earth three times before splashing down in the North Atlantic, where the destroyer USS Noa picked it up. The whole flight lasted under five hours.

Which Russian crewed spacecraft, whose name means 'union', has been in service since the 1960s?

Soyuz was the sole way for astronauts to reach the International Space Station between the Space Shuttle's retirement in 2011 and 2020. It has made more than 140 flights.

Which Blue Origin rocket, named after the first American in space, flew Jeff Bezos in July 2021?

New Shepard honours Alan Shepard, and its first crewed flight lasted about ten minutes. Bezos shared the capsule with his brother Mark, Wally Funk and Oliver Daemen.

Which rocket plane made the first private crewed spaceflight and won the Ansari X Prize in 2004?

SpaceShipOne folds its tail booms 70 degrees upward to slow its fall back to Earth. It was retired as soon as it had won the prize.

Which NASA capsule flew around the Moon without a crew on the Artemis I test flight in 2022?

Orion made that flight chiefly to prove its heat shield before any astronauts rode it on later Artemis missions. A new rocket, the Space Launch System, sent it on its way.

Which Soviet shuttle flew only once, without a crew, before a hangar collapse destroyed it in 2002?

Buran means blizzard, and its single flight in 1988 ended with an automatic landing a few metres from its target mark. It managed that in a strong crosswind.

Which cosmonaut made the first spacewalk in March 1965, spending 12 minutes outside his capsule?

Alexei Leonov found his suit had ballooned and stiffened so much that he had to bleed off pressure before he could get back into the airlock.

Which spacecraft carried Yang Liwei into orbit in 2003 on China's first crewed spaceflight?

Shenzhou 5 made China the third country able to launch its own astronauts, after the Soviet Union and the United States. Yang Liwei flew the mission alone.

Which NASA spacecraft made the first flyby of Pluto in July 2015, more than nine years after launch?

New Horizons carries about an ounce of the ashes of Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto in 1930. It passed 12,500 km above the surface.

Which aerospace company built the Starliner capsule that first carried astronauts in June 2024?

Boeing saw its capsule reach the space station with Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, then come home empty after thruster trouble. The pair returned on another craft in 2025.

Which company built the giant Starship rocket at its Starbase site in Texas?

SpaceX first caught a returning Starship booster at the launch pad, using a structure nicknamed Mechazilla, in October 2024.

In Jules Verne's novel From the Earth to the Moon, what launches the travellers' capsule into space?

An enormous cannon called the Columbiad is the work of the Baltimore Gun Club, a society of weapons enthusiasts. Verne's rough sums for it proved remarkably accurate in places.

Which ship does bounty hunter Din Djarin fly until it is destroyed in season two of The Mandalorian?

The Razor Crest was only half built for filming. The front was a physical set and the back half was rendered digitally.

Which comedy film has aliens build a working copy of the NSEA Protector, a ship from a TV show?

Galaxy Quest's aliens, the Thermians, need the show's cast to fight a real enemy. The lead actor arrives hungover and assumes he has walked onto a set.

The TIE fighter's roar in Star Wars blends a car on wet pavement with the call of which animal?

An elephant call gave the fragile-looking fighters their menace, courtesy of sound designer Ben Burtt. TIE stands for twin ion engine.

Which desert planet supplies the spice that Guild Navigators need to steer heighliners in Dune?

Arrakis was long the only source of the spice, which gives Navigators the limited foresight they need to guide ships safely through folded space.

Which Belgian comic-strip reporter rode the first crewed Moon rocket in a story serialised from 1952?

Tintin reaches the Moon in a two-book story that Hergé researched in depth so that it would feel as realistic as possible. Human spaceflight was then years away.

Which science-fiction TV series is set aboard Moya, a bio-mechanical ship that is a living creature?

Farscape begins with Moya fleeing the militaristic Peacekeepers, who had used her as a prison transport. An astronaut from Earth turns up in the middle of the escape.

In which Arthur C. Clarke novel do astronauts explore a cylindrical alien ship 50 kilometres long?

Rendezvous with Rama won the Hugo, Locus and Nebula awards. Its explorers find a frozen body of water inside the ship and name it the Cylindrical Sea.

Which stealth frigate does the player command throughout the original Mass Effect video game trilogy?

Normandy comes in two versions. The first is a joint human and Turian design, and the Cerberus group builds its improved replacement for Mass Effect 2.

Which 1960s TV series follows the Robinson family aboard a ship called the Jupiter 2?

Lost in Space was inspired by the 1812 novel The Swiss Family Robinson, which gave creator Irwin Allen his castaway family and their surname.

In Pixar's WALL-E, which starliner has been humanity's home for the 700 years since Earth was abandoned?

The Axiom's passengers have grown helpless over the centuries, riding hoverchairs while robots cater to their every whim.

In Mel Brooks's Spaceballs, hero Lone Starr flies a spaceship built from which kind of road vehicle?

A Winnebago RV is home to Lone Starr and his sidekick Barf. It later runs out of fuel and crash-lands on a desert moon.