Neil Armstrong Trivia
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58 free Neil Armstrong trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
This Neil Armstrong trivia quiz covers the reluctant hero who took humanity's first step on another world. The easy questions cover the basics: the mission he commanded, the two men who flew with him, the date of the landing, the ship that picked them up and the words he spoke at the bottom of the ladder. From there it moves through his Ohio boyhood, the pilot's licence he earned before his driver's licence, Purdue and the Navy, the wing torn off over Korea, the years as a test pilot at Edwards, the seven X-15 flights and the late application that a friend slipped into the pile. The harder end covers Gemini 8 and the stuck thruster, the ejection from the Flying Bedstead half a second from death, why he and not Aldrin went out first, the 1202 alarms, the seconds of fuel left at touchdown, the pen that started the ascent engine, the missing indefinite article, the Chrysler adverts, the Rogers Commission, the barber who sold his hair, the fingertip he had reattached, the North Pole trip with Edmund Hillary and the ashes scattered at sea. Every answer was checked against Armstrong's encyclopaedia entry before publishing and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our Apollo 13, NASA and Space Exploration quizzes are natural companions.
30 of 58 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which US president telephoned Armstrong from the Oval Office while he stood on the Moon?
Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon. As he congratulated the crew, a second speech lay ready that he never had to give: one written two days earlier in case they could not get off the Moon.
Q 02Near which Ohio town was Armstrong born in 1930?
Wapakoneta
Wapakoneta. The town opened a museum to him three years to the day after the landing, and in 2017 thieves broke in and stole a solid-gold model of the lunar module that he had been given in Paris.
Q 03At age two, Armstrong was taken by his father to the National Air Races in which Ohio city?
Cleveland
Cleveland. He remembered neither that day nor his first flight, in a Ford Trimotor at about six, and said his father had no special love of aviation, only of showing his children new things.
Q 04What did Armstrong earn on his 16th birthday, before he had a driver's licence?
A student flight certificate
A student flight certificate. Sixteen was the youngest the rules allowed for powered aircraft, and it let him fly alone but carry no passengers; he made his first solo flight within weeks.
Q 05At which university did Armstrong study aeronautical engineering from 1947?
Purdue
Purdue. A Navy scholarship paid his way on condition that he break off to serve as a pilot: called up after three semesters, he did not collect his degree until 1955.
Q 06Over which country did Armstrong fly 78 combat missions as a young naval aviator?
Korea
Korea. The novelist James Michener sailed with his carrier that winter, and Armstrong called The Bridges at Toko-Ri an excellent picture of their flying, though the film added girls he did not remember.
Q 07Armstrong took a scrap of wing fabric and a piece of propeller from which pioneering aircraft to the Moon?
The Wright Flyer
The Wright Flyer. The relics came from the Air Force Museum in Dayton by special arrangement and rode down to the surface in his personal kit: one Ohio flyer saluting two others.
Q 08After his jet lost part of a wing in combat, what saved Armstrong?
Ejecting over friendly territory
Ejecting over friendly territory. By his own account a cable strung between hills had sliced the wing; he meant to come down in the sea, but the wind blew his parachute back over land.
Q 09Which instrument did Armstrong strum to pass the time in quarantine after returning from the Moon?
Ukulele
Ukulele. Music was an old habit: at university he had played baritone horn in the marching band and co-directed a student musical, and a NASA photograph catches him mid-strum in isolation.
Q 10Who played Armstrong's wife Janet in the 2018 film First Man?
Claire Foy
Claire Foy. The film gives her the home front: before the Moon flight, Janet makes him sit down with their two sons and tell them himself that he may not come back.
Q 11At which air force base did Armstrong become a NACA test pilot in 1955?
Edwards
Edwards. It had no opening when he first applied, so he began at another laboratory in what he called the lowest-paying job he was offered; in 2014 NASA renamed its centre at the desert base after him.
Q 12Which rocket plane did Armstrong fly at nearly 4,000 mph?
North American X-15
North American X-15. He was engineer as much as pilot: he worked with the designers on its self-adapting flight controls and then made the first flight with them himself.
Q 13Which moonwalker joked that the first step 'may have been a small one for Neil, but that's a long one for me'?
Pete Conrad
Q 21What became of the overshoes Armstrong wore to make the first lunar footprints?
Left on the Moon
Left on the Moon. To lighten the lander for lift-off and free up its cramped cabin, the two men threw their overshoes, life-support backpacks and other spent gear out of the hatch.
Q 22In which South American country did Armstrong greet dignitaries in Guarani during a 1966 goodwill tour?
Paraguay
Paraguay. President Johnson sent him round South America after his Gemini flight, and he later said the trip had taught him what to expect when the whole world wanted to meet the first man on the Moon.
Q 23Armstrong was in Washington on the day of the Apollo 1 fire for the signing of which agreement?
Pete Conrad. He had bet a reporter $500 that astronauts chose their own words, so he made up a line no official would script, a joke about his own short legs; he said he was never paid.
Q 14With which famous pilot did Armstrong get a jet stuck in the mud of a Nevada lake bed in 1962?
Chuck Yeager
Chuck Yeager. He wrote that he had warned the rain-soaked lake bed would not hold them; Armstrong's version was that Yeager never objected, told him to land again, and howled with laughter when the wheels sank.
Q 15Why was Armstrong ineligible for the original Mercury astronaut selection?
He was a civilian test pilot
He was a civilian test pilot. The first intake took only military test pilots, and when NASA dropped that rule for its second group in 1962 he was already flying its fastest rocket planes.
Q 16How did Armstrong's astronaut application get considered after arriving a week past NASA's 1962 deadline?
A friend slipped it in
A friend slipped it in. Dick Day, a simulator expert who had worked with him, was the selection panel's secretary; in one telling he added it to the pile unseen, in another a senior manager told him to.
Q 17What did the press call the second group of NASA astronauts, selected in 1962?
The New Nine
The New Nine. NASA hired them to fly the two-seat Gemini as a rehearsal for Apollo, and it paid off: six of the nine went on to the Moon and three walked on it, though two died before any landing.
Q 18Which mission was Armstrong's first spaceflight?
Gemini 8
Gemini 8. He and David Scott, both on their first trip to orbit, set off in March 1966 on a planned three-day flight and were back in the sea ten hours and 41 minutes later.
Q 19What milestone did Armstrong's March 1966 flight achieve before its emergency?
The first docking of two spacecraft
The first docking of two spacecraft. Soon after, a stuck thruster set the pair rolling; once they undocked, the capsule spun at almost a turn a second until Armstrong stopped it with his re-entry thrusters, which ended the flight.
Q 20Armstrong's first spaceflight ended in an emergency splashdown 500 miles east of which Japanese island?
Okinawa
Okinawa. The landing had been planned for the other side of the world three days later, so only a backup destroyer was in reach; it hauled the capsule aboard and carried the two astronauts into the island's port of Naha.
The Outer Space Treaty
The Outer Space Treaty. Signed at the White House that day with five astronauts looking on, it bars any nation from claiming the Moon, so the flag he planted there in 1969 staked no claim.
Q 24What was the nickname of the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle from which Armstrong ejected in May 1968?
The Flying Bedstead
The Flying Bedstead. The crash did not put him off: he was flying its successor again the month before launch, and said afterwards that the Moon landing would not have succeeded without such training.
Q 25By Armstrong's own account, whom did Deke Slayton offer him in place of Buzz Aldrin for the first landing crew?
Jim Lovell
Jim Lovell. Armstrong said he took a day to think and kept Aldrin, reasoning that Lovell, who had already commanded a Gemini flight, deserved a command of his own and not the crew's most junior seat.
Q 26What reason did NASA give in 1969 for sending Armstrong out of the lunar module ahead of Aldrin?
How the cabin hatch opened
How the cabin hatch opened. It swung inwards towards Aldrin's side and boxed him in; Chris Kraft later wrote that the managers had in any case wanted a calm, quiet man like Lindbergh to go first.
Q 27Which rocket launched Armstrong's crew towards the Moon from Kennedy Space Center in July 1969?
Saturn V
Saturn V. Its last unmanned test had shaken itself badly on the way up, and Armstrong thought it 'incredibly aggressive' when NASA put a crew on the very next one, seven months before his own launch.
Q 28What did the 1202 alarms that sounded during Armstrong's descent to the Moon turn out to mean?
An overloaded guidance computer
An overloaded guidance computer. Neither astronaut had met the alarm in training, but Houston took only seconds to call 'Go': the computer was shedding its low-priority jobs and carrying on.
Q 29Why did Armstrong take manual control of the lunar module moments before touchdown?
A boulder field ahead
A boulder field ahead. The automatic descent was heading for rough ground beside a crater, so he flew on to a smoother spot, landing with the fuel warning lit and the engine's dust blurring his view.
Q 30Which name did Armstrong give the landing site when he radioed Houston that 'The Eagle has landed'?
Tranquility Base
Tranquility Base. The sudden new call sign left Charlie Duke in Houston tongue-tied ('Roger, Twan... Tranquility'), and he added that mission control had 'a bunch of guys about to turn blue'.