Buzz Aldrin
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49 free Buzz Aldrin trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Buzz Aldrin was the seasick cadet who talked a senator into switching his nomination from Annapolis to West Point, shot down two MiGs over Korea, wrote an MIT doctorate on orbital rendezvous and became the first astronaut with a PhD. Nineteen minutes after Neil Armstrong he stepped onto the Moon, took private communion there, and spent the decades since arguing that humans should go to Mars. These 49 questions cover the whole life. The nickname from a sister who said 'buzzer', the Life magazine gun-camera footage, the Gemini 12 spacewalks that finally cracked EVA, why almost every famous Apollo 11 surface photo shows him rather than Armstrong, the 21-day quarantine, the depression and used-car job he wrote about in Return to Earth, the punch thrown at 72, the South Pole at 86 and the fourth wedding at 93. Easy questions stick to Apollo 11 and Buzz Lightyear; the expert tier asks about recovery ships, Psalm 8 and the Aldrin cycler. Every answer is cited to a page we checked.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which first name was Buzz Aldrin given at birth?
Edwin
Edwin. Born Edwin Eugene Aldrin Jr., he answered to his childhood nickname for so long that as an adult he made Buzz his legal first name.
Q 02Aldrin's nickname Buzz came from his sister's attempt to say which word?
Brother
Brother. His sister Fay Ann couldn't manage the word and called him 'buzzer' instead, and the family trimmed that down to Buzz.
Q 03In which state was Aldrin born?
New Jersey
New Jersey. He grew up in Montclair, where the middle school he once attended was renamed Buzz Aldrin Middle School in 2016, with Aldrin there to see it.
Q 04Aldrin played centre for his high school's unbeaten 1946 state champions in which sport?
Football
Football. He had given the game up in his junior year to pull his grades up, then went back as a senior and helped his school through a perfect season.
Q 05From which academy did Aldrin graduate third in the class of 1951?
West Point
West Point. The Air Force Academy didn't open until 1955, so a top West Point graduate like Aldrin could choose an Air Force commission instead of an Army one, and he did.
Q 06In the 1910s, Aldrin's father studied physics under which rocket pioneer?
Robert Goddard
Robert Goddard. Aldrin's father was his student at Clark University, and half a century later the son rode liquid-fuelled rockets, Goddard's invention, all the way to the lunar surface.
Q 07Which magazine printed Aldrin's gun-camera pictures of an enemy pilot ejecting from his MiG?
Life
Life. The picture weekly ran the frames from his first kill soon after the dogfight, so Aldrin's name reached millions of readers long before anyone knew him as an astronaut.
Q 08Which American jet fighter did Aldrin fly in his dogfights with MiG-15s?
Sabre
Sabre. Aldrin's father wanted him in bombers for the command experience, but he held out for fighters and got the F-86 Sabre.
Q 09Which squadron mate of Aldrin's in West Germany became the first American to walk in space?
Ed White
Ed White. After leaving Germany for graduate school he wrote urging Aldrin to follow, the push that sent Aldrin back to the classroom and on toward NASA.
Q 10From which university did Aldrin earn his doctorate in astronautics?
MIT
MIT. He enrolled for a master's degree, found he enjoyed the work and stayed on for a doctorate, dedicating his thesis to the astronauts he hoped to join.
Q 11What nickname did fellow astronauts give Aldrin because of his doctoral thesis?
Dr. Rendezvous
Dr. Rendezvous. He knew it wasn't always meant as praise, but when Gemini 12's radar failed he guided the link-up himself with a sextant and charts he had helped write.
Q 12Why was Aldrin's first application to NASA in 1962 rejected?
He was not a test pilot
He was not a test pilot, and NASA refused him a waiver. A year later it dropped the rule for pilots with enough jet hours, and Aldrin was picked at the next try.
Q 13What did Aldrin push into a broken circuit breaker so the engine could be armed for lift-off from the Moon?
A felt-tip pen
Q 21Leaving Eagle, what did Aldrin joke he mustn't do?
Lock the hatch
Lock the hatch. Aldrin pulled the door nearly shut, 'making sure not to lock it on my way out', and Armstrong laughed and called it a good thought; Aldrin reached the surface nineteen minutes after him.
Q 22What two-word phrase did Aldrin use to describe the lunar landscape, later the title of his memoir?
Magnificent desolation
Magnificent desolation. At the foot of the ladder he first said 'Beautiful view'; the famous phrase came seconds later, answering Armstrong's 'Magnificent sight out here'.
Q 23What private religious act did Aldrin perform on the Moon?
He took communion
A felt-tip pen. His backpack had snapped the switch off the breaker that armed the ascent engine, so Aldrin pressed the pen into the hole, and Houston confirmed a good circuit.
Q 14In which lunar 'sea' did Aldrin and Armstrong land in July 1969?
Sea of Tranquility
Sea of Tranquility. Probes had shown it to be flat and smooth, yet the computer steered Eagle toward a crater ringed with boulders and Armstrong had to fly past it by hand.
Q 15What preparation method, new for Gemini 12, helped Aldrin succeed at spacewalking?
Underwater training
Underwater training. NASA had no suitable pool of its own yet, so Aldrin rehearsed on a mock-up of the spacecraft sunk in the swimming pool of a private school in Maryland.
Q 16Which addition to Gemini 12 eased Aldrin's spacewalks?
Handholds
Handholds and footholds. Anchored by them, Aldrin spent a record five and a half hours outside over three spacewalks and showed that astronauts could do real work there.
Q 17What celestial event did Aldrin and his Gemini 12 commander photograph from orbit?
A solar eclipse
A solar eclipse. When a planned climb to a higher orbit was scrapped over an engine fault, the crew used smaller thrusters to meet a total eclipse over South America and shot it through the windows.
Q 18Which Apollo 11 crewmate circled the Moon alone while Aldrin and Armstrong walked on it?
Michael Collins
Michael Collins. Cut off from all radio contact each time he passed behind the Moon, he wrote that he felt not fear or loneliness but 'awareness, anticipation, satisfaction, confidence, almost exultation'.
Q 19What role did Aldrin hold on Apollo 11?
Lunar Module pilot
Lunar Module pilot. Despite the title, Armstrong did the flying on the way down while Aldrin stood beside him reading out their height and speed.
Q 20Who commanded Gemini 12, with Aldrin as his pilot?
Jim Lovell
Jim Lovell. He and Aldrin were only a backup crew until the men due to fly Gemini 9 died in a plane crash, a reshuffle that moved them up to the programme's final flight.
He took communion, with bread and wine from his Presbyterian church. NASA, sued by an atheist over Apollo 8's Bible reading, had told him to keep his radio remarks general.
Q 24On the flight home, Aldrin broadcast a verse about 'the moon and the stars' from which book of the Bible?
Psalms
Psalms. In the crew's last television broadcast before splashdown he quoted Psalm 8: 'When I consider the heavens ... what is man that Thou art mindful of him.'
Q 25Why do most famous Apollo 11 photos of an astronaut on the Moon show Aldrin?
Armstrong usually held the camera
Armstrong usually held the camera, so in the best-known picture from the mission, a full-length portrait of Aldrin, the commander appears only as a reflection in the visor.
Q 26What does Aldrin claim to be the first person ever to do on the Moon?
Urinate on the Moon
Urinate on the Moon. He used the collection bag inside his suit at the foot of the ladder, and has joked that it is one lunar first nobody has ever disputed.
Q 27Which president phoned Armstrong and Aldrin on the lunar surface?
Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon. Speaking from the Oval Office to two men standing beside their flag, he told them it 'certainly has to be the most historic telephone call ever made'.
Q 28Why was Aldrin's Apollo 11 crew sealed in a trailer after splashdown?
Moon germs
Moon germs. NASA feared lunar microbes, so the crew lived in a converted Airstream and then a sealed laboratory until 21 days after they first touched lunar dust, and nobody fell ill.
Q 29Which aircraft carrier recovered the Apollo 11 crew?
USS Hornet
USS Hornet. Its helicopter was lowered to the hangar deck so the crew could walk straight into a sealed trailer, and that November the same carrier picked up Apollo 12.
Q 30After leaving NASA in 1971, Aldrin became commandant of what?
The USAF Test Pilot School
The USAF Test Pilot School, at Edwards Air Force Base in California. The post brought him no peace: battling depression, he retired from the Air Force the following year.