Space Race Trivia
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7correct to beat the crowd
50 free Space Race trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Space Race trivia quiz covers the Cold War contest between the United States and the Soviet Union from the captured V-2 rockets of 1945 to the handshake in orbit in 1975. It opens with the missile race, Sergei Korolev's R-7 and the beeping sphere it launched on October 4, 1957, the Vanguard fireball the newspapers called Flopnik, Explorer 1 and the Van Allen belts, and the dog Laika. It then moves through the first humans in space: Gagarin's single orbit, Alan Shepard's Freedom 7, John Glenn, Valentina Tereshkova, Alexei Leonov's near-fatal spacewalk and Neil Armstrong's spinning Gemini 8. The second half follows the race to the Moon: Kennedy's May 1961 challenge, the Apollo 1 fire and Soyuz 1 crash on opposite sides of the Iron Curtain, the Outer Space Treaty, the N1 rocket that never flew successfully, Apollo 8's Christmas broadcast, Luna 15 sharing lunar orbit with Apollo 11, and the 723 million people who watched the first step. It closes with the Soviet firsts that followed: Salyut, Lunokhod, Venera 7 on Venus and Mars 3, plus Skylab and the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project. Questions run from easy to expert. Every answer was checked against the Wikipedia article on the Space Race, and each explanation adds one more detail worth knowing.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01What was the name of the first artificial satellite, launched by the Soviet Union on October 4, 1957?
Sputnik 1
Sputnik 1, whose name means 'fellow traveler', was a polished 58 cm sphere weighing 83.6 kg that beeped from orbit for 21 days until its batteries died.
Q 02Which Soviet rocket, the first ICBM, launched Sputnik and became the basis for Vostok and Soyuz?
R-7
The R-7 Semyorka made its first fully successful flight on August 21, 1957, carrying a dummy warhead some 6,000 km to Kamchatka; the Soyuz launcher family descends from it.
Q 03Which German rocket engineer developed the Redstone rocket and first directed the Marshall Space Flight Center?
Wernher von Braun
Wernher von Braun led the wartime A-4 (V-2) team at Peenemünde, then the Redstone at Huntsville, and was Marshall Space Flight Center's first director from 1960 to 1970.
Q 04Which secret Soviet chief designer got the Academy of Sciences to commit in 1955 to beating the US to a satellite?
Sergei Korolev
Sergei Korolev, the anonymous 'Chief Designer', won the Academy of Sciences commission on August 30, 1955 that aimed to beat the US into orbit; his identity stayed secret until his death in January 1966.
Q 05Which dog became the first animal in orbit, aboard the second Soviet satellite in 1957?
Laika
Laika rode Sputnik 2 on November 3, 1957 with no way home; in 2002 Russian scientists revealed she died of overheating and stress within hours, around the fourth orbit, not when her oxygen ran out.
Q 06What was the first mammal in space, launched by the US on a suborbital flight in June 1949?
A rhesus monkey named Albert II
The first was a rhesus monkey named Albert II, who rode a V-2 to 134 km on June 14, 1949 and died on impact when the parachute failed.
Q 07Which of these mocking names did newspapers give the Vanguard satellite after its December 1957 launch blew up?
Flopnik
'Flopnik' was one of the press labels, alongside 'Kaputnik', 'Stayputnik' and 'Dudnik'; at the UN the Soviet delegate offered America aid 'under the Soviet program of technical assistance to backward nations'.
Q 08What was the first successful American satellite, launched on January 31, 1958?
Explorer 1
Explorer 1 rode a Juno I rocket from Cape Canaveral on January 31, 1958; its Geiger tube saturated in a zone of intense radiation, the first hint of Earth's radiation belts.
Q 09Which University of Iowa physicist built the cosmic-ray instrument aboard the first US satellite?
James Van Allen
James Van Allen of the University of Iowa designed the cosmic-ray detector on the first US satellite; the doughnut-shaped radiation zones it revealed were named the Van Allen belts.
Q 10On which date did President Eisenhower sign the National Aeronautics and Space Act, creating NASA?
July 29, 1958
Eisenhower signed the National Aeronautics and Space Act on July 29, 1958, turning the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics into NASA, which opened on October 1 that year; Senate Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson steered the bill.
Q 11Which Soviet probe was the first spacecraft to hit the Moon, on September 14, 1959?
Luna 2
Luna 2 struck the Moon on September 14, 1959 Moscow time, the first man-made object to reach another world, scattering pennants bearing the Soviet coat of arms; its predecessor had missed the Moon entirely.
Q 12How long did Yuri Gagarin's single-orbit flight aboard Vostok 1 last on April 12, 1961?
108 minutes
Gagarin's flight lasted 108 minutes from launch to landing; Vostok 1 flew on automatic, and he carried a sealed envelope with the code to unlock manual control in an emergency.
Q 13Roughly translated from Russian and Greek, what does 'cosmonaut' mean?
Sailor of the universe
Q 21Where did Kennedy deliver his 'We choose to go to the Moon' speech on September 12, 1962?
Rice Stadium in Houston
Kennedy spoke at Rice Stadium in Houston, the home field of Rice University, which had helped NASA acquire land for the Manned Spacecraft Center, later renamed the Johnson Space Center.
Q 22In a September 1963 UN speech, Kennedy proposed that the US and USSR should do what?
Join forces on a mission to the Moon
Kennedy proposed that the two nations join forces on a mission to the Moon, asking why they should duplicate effort; Sergei Khrushchev later said his father was ready to accept but distrusted Lyndon Johnson after the assassination.
Q 23Which March 1966 mission made the world's first docking, then spun wildly when a thruster stuck?
'Cosmonaut' joins Greek kosmos (universe) and nautes (sailor), hence sailor of the universe; 'astronaut' likewise means star sailor. April 12 became Cosmonautics Day in the USSR and, in 2011, the UN's International Day of Human Space Flight.
Q 14How did Vostok cosmonauts return to the ground after re-entry?
They ejected and parachuted separately from the capsule
The spherical descent module landed too hard for a person to ride it down safely, so the cosmonaut bailed out at about 7,000 metres.
Q 15What did Alan Shepard name the Mercury capsule that made him the first American in space?
Freedom 7
Shepard named his capsule Freedom 7; the 15-minute suborbital hop on May 5, 1961 made him the first person to steer a spacecraft's attitude by hand.
Q 16How many orbits did John Glenn complete on February 20, 1962, as the first American to orbit the Earth?
Three
Glenn circled the Earth three times in Friendship 7 in just under five hours; a false telemetry signal about a loose heat shield worried controllers, but he splashed down safely and got a ticker-tape parade.
Q 17Faith 7 in May 1963 pushed the Mercury spacecraft to its maximum endurance of how many orbits?
22
Gordon Cooper's Faith 7 completed 22 orbits over 34 hours on May 15-16, 1963, the longest Mercury flight; NASA then cancelled a planned longer Mercury mission and moved on to Gemini.
Q 18Who was the first woman in space, launched on Vostok 6 on June 16, 1963?
Valentina Tereshkova
Valentina Tereshkova, a textile worker and amateur parachutist rather than a test pilot, spent 71 hours in orbit; in November 1963 she married fellow cosmonaut Andriyan Nikolayev.
Q 19Which cosmonaut made the first spacewalk in March 1965 and nearly could not get back in when his suit ballooned?
Alexei Leonov
Alexei Leonov floated outside Voskhod 2 for about 12 minutes on March 18, 1965; with his suit stiffened by vacuum, he bled air from it to squeeze back through the inflatable airlock.
Q 20On May 25, 1961, President Kennedy asked Congress to commit to landing a man on the Moon by when?
Before the end of the decade
Kennedy asked for a man on the Moon before the end of the decade ('before this decade is out'); two months earlier he had refused extra Apollo funding, until Gagarin's flight and the Bay of Pigs changed his mind.
Gemini 8
Gemini 8 docked with an Agena target on March 16, 1966, then a stuck thruster set it tumbling; Neil Armstrong stopped the spin with the re-entry thrusters and he and David Scott landed early but safe.
Q 24How many crewed missions did NASA's two-man program between Mercury and Apollo fly?
Ten
Gemini flew ten crewed missions, Gemini 3 to Gemini 12, between March 1965 and November 1966, during a two-year Soviet pause while Soyuz was developed, letting the US overtake the USSR in piloted spaceflight.
Q 25Which three astronauts died in the Apollo 1 fire on January 27, 1967?
Grissom, White and Chaffee
Gus Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee died in a pure-oxygen cabin fire during a launch-pad test; the inward-opening plug-door hatch could not be opened against the internal pressure.
Q 26Who became the first person to die on a spaceflight when Soyuz 1's parachutes failed in 1967?
Vladimir Komarov
Vladimir Komarov died on April 24, 1967 when Soyuz 1's main parachute failed and the reserve tangled with the drogue; the craft had already lost a solar panel and its stabilisation systems.
Q 27Which three astronauts flew Apollo 8, the first crewed mission to orbit the Moon, in December 1968?
Borman, Lovell and Anders
Frank Borman, James Lovell and William Anders made ten orbits in twenty hours; the mission was moved up because the Lunar Module was not ready.
Q 28Which Soviet super-heavy Moon rocket blew up on its launch pad on 3 July 1969?
N1
The N1's second test flight fell back onto the pad on 3 July 1969 in one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history; all four N1 launches failed and the programme was suspended in 1974.
Q 29How close to the lunar surface did Apollo 10's Lunar Module fly in its May 1969 'dress rehearsal'?
About 47,400 feet
Snoopy, Apollo 10's Lunar Module, came within about 47,400 feet (14.4 km) of the surface, near the height at which a real powered descent would start; the LM had first flown crewed on Apollo 9 in March.
Q 30Roughly how many people watched Neil Armstrong's first step on the Moon live on television?
About 723 million
Estimates put the live audience at about 723 million, roughly one-fifth of the world's 1969 population; Buzz Aldrin joined Armstrong on the surface about 19 minutes later.