Apollo Program Trivia
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49 free Apollo Program trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Between 1961 and 1972 the Apollo program took 24 people to the Moon and landed 12 of them on it, and this quiz covers the whole arc rather than just the first footprint. It starts with the decisions: Kennedy's deadline, Abe Silverstein naming the program after a Greek god, John Houbolt's lonely campaign for lunar orbit rendezvous, and the contractors who built the Saturn V, the command module and the spidery Lunar Module. Then it walks mission by mission: the Apollo 1 fire and the pure-oxygen cabin, Wally Schirra's head cold on Apollo 7, the Genesis reading of Apollo 8, Spider and Gumdrop, Snoopy and Charlie Brown, Apollo 12's lightning strikes, Alan Shepard's golf shots, the first rover and the hammer-and-feather drop on Apollo 15, Big Muley on Apollo 16, and Apollo 17's night launch and the last man on the Moon. It closes with what came after: 382 kg of Moon rock, Skylab falling on Australia, and the handshake in orbit with Soyuz. If you want the first landing in detail, our separate Apollo 11 quiz goes deep on Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins, and Apollo 13 has its own quiz too. Every answer here was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the program, its missions and its hardware, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01In which years did the Apollo program run?
1961 to 1972
The first crewed flight did not come until 1968, seven years after Kennedy set the goal.
Q 02President Kennedy set the goal of landing a man on the Moon in an address to Congress in which year?
1961
The May 25 speech promised to do it before the decade was out; Apollo 11 made the deadline with five months to spare.
Q 03Which NASA manager named the Apollo program, saying he did it 'like I'd name my baby'?
Abe Silverstein
He picked the name at home one evening in early 1960, feeling Apollo riding his chariot across the Sun suited the scale of the plan.
Q 04Apollo was conceived in 1960 as a follow-up to which earlier NASA program?
Project Mercury
Mercury capsules carried one astronaut; Apollo was designed from the start to carry three.
Q 05At its peak, roughly how many people did the Apollo program employ?
400,000
It also drew on more than 20,000 firms and universities and took over half of NASA's spending in the 1960s.
Q 06According to improved cost analysis, what did the Apollo program cost in then-year dollars?
$25.4 billion
That is roughly $257 billion in 2023 money, most of it spent on the Saturn rockets, the spacecraft and mission operations.
Q 07How many people walked on the Moon during the Apollo program?
12
Twenty-four astronauts flew to the Moon in all, three of them twice, and none of the walkers ever went back after landing once.
Q 08Which mission mode, championed by Langley engineer John Houbolt, was chosen for reaching the Moon?
Lunar orbit rendezvous
Houbolt bypassed the NASA hierarchy with memos describing himself as a voice in the wilderness; von Braun thanked him by name when Apollo 11 landed.
Q 09The direct-ascent plan would have needed which giant launch vehicle, larger than the Saturn V?
Nova
The June 1962 decision to use lunar orbit rendezvous let the Saturn V replace it, and it was never built.
Q 10Which company won the contract to build the Apollo Lunar Module?
Grumman
The craft was assembled at its factory in Bethpage, New York, and its development ran about ten months late.
Q 11The Lunar Module was originally called the LEM. What did the E stand for?
Excursion
The E was dropped from the abbreviation, but astronauts and engineers kept pronouncing it 'lem' rather than 'L-M'.
Q 12Which company was prime contractor for the Apollo CSM and the Saturn V's second stage?
North American Aviation
Its bid was not rated as good as Martin's, and its delays on both pieces of hardware pushed the first Saturn V flight to November 1967.
Q 13The Saturn V's first stage used five engines of which type, still the most powerful single-chamber liquid engines built?
F-1
The upper two stages burned liquid hydrogen with J-2 engines, five on the second stage and one on the third.
Q 21Apollo 7 achieved which broadcasting milestone?
Live TV from an American spacecraft
The first show went out on October 14, 1968, three days into the eleven-day flight.
Q 22Apollo 8's crew read the opening verses of which book in their Christmas Eve 1968 broadcast?
Genesis
Borman, Lovell and Anders circled the Moon ten times and were named Time's Men of the Year.
Q 23Which Apollo 8 astronaut took the famous Earthrise photograph?
William Anders
He saw Earth emerging over the lunar horizon on the fourth pass and grabbed a black-and-white shot before switching to colour film.
Q 14How many Saturn V rockets were launched in total?
13
All flew from Launch Complex 39 between 1967 and 1973; nine of them sent astronauts toward the Moon and the last lofted Skylab.
Q 15The Saturn V was developed at the Marshall Space Flight Center in which city?
Huntsville, Alabama
The centre was established on July 1, 1960, and directed by Wernher von Braun.
Q 16Under which codename was Wernher von Braun secretly brought to the US after the war with about 1,600 other Germans?
Paperclip
About 1,600 German scientists and technicians were brought over; von Braun's team went on to launch Explorer 1 in 1958.
Q 17The Apollo 1 fire that killed Grissom, White and Chaffee happened during what?
A launch rehearsal on the pad
The January 27, 1967, plugs-out test simulated running on internal power; the hatch could not be opened against the cabin pressure.
Q 18The Apollo 1 fire spread so fast partly because the cabin atmosphere was what?
High-pressure pure oxygen
The cabin had been pumped to 16.7 psi of oxygen, two psi above atmospheric, and the fire drove that to 29 psi before the wall ruptured.
Q 19What was Apollo 1's original mission designation before it was renamed in the crew's honour?
AS-204
The astronauts' widows asked that the name be reserved for the flight their husbands never made; its Saturn IB was reused to launch Apollo 5.
Q 20Apollo 7, the first crewed Apollo flight in October 1968, was commanded by which Mercury veteran, who was asked to fly it soon after the fire?
Wally Schirra
He developed a head cold in orbit and refused Mission Control's request to power up the TV camera; the crew's discipline problems cost them the higher NASA medal.
Q 24On Apollo 9, the Lunar Module was nicknamed Spider. What was the command module called?
Gumdrop
The name came from the blue protective wrapping the command module wore on delivery from the factory.
Q 25Apollo 10's spacecraft were named after characters from which comic strip?
Peanuts
Charlie Brown was the command module and Snoopy the lunar module, which flew to within 14.4 km of the surface in the dress rehearsal for the landing.
Q 26Which mission set the crewed speed record relative to Earth, about 39,897 km/h?
Apollo 10
The record was set on May 26, 1969, on the way home from the Moon.
Q 27The first three lunar missions used what trajectory so a failed engine would still bring them home?
Free return
Apollo 8, 10 and 11 flew coplanar with the Moon's orbit; later missions dropped the safeguard for better landing sites.
Q 28Shortly after launching in the rain, Apollo 12 was twice hit by what?
Lightning
The strikes knocked out instrumentation but caused little damage, and the mission went on to a pinpoint landing.
Q 29Apollo 12 landed within walking distance of which robotic probe, and brought parts of it home?
Surveyor 3
The probe had sat on the Ocean of Storms since April 1967; Conrad and Bean photographed it and removed pieces for study.
Q 30Apollo 12's colour TV broadcast from the surface ended abruptly when Alan Bean did what?
Pointed it at the Sun
The sensor burned out; it was the first colour camera taken to the lunar surface.