Space Quiz

In Hindi our home galaxy is called 'Akashganga', the river of the sky. What is its English name?

• Andromeda
• Milky Way
• Whirlpool
• Sombrero

Answer: Milky Way. Akashganga is the Milky Way. Away from city lights you can see it as a faint band across the night sky. Andromeda is our nearest big neighbouring galaxy.

India's Mangalyaan reached its target in 2014 on the very first attempt. Which planet did it orbit?

• Venus
• Jupiter
• Mars
• Mercury

Answer: Mars. The Mars Orbiter Mission entered Mars orbit on 24 September 2014. India became the first Asian country to reach Mars orbit, and the first country to do it on its first try.

Asked by Indira Gandhi how India looked from space, the reply was 'Saare Jahan Se Achha'. Which astronaut said it?

• Rakesh Sharma
• Kalpana Chawla
• Shubhanshu Shukla
• Sunita Williams

Answer: Rakesh Sharma. Rakesh Sharma flew on the Soviet Soyuz T-11 in April 1984 and became the first Indian in space. Shubhanshu Shukla became the second in 2025, on the Axiom-4 mission to the ISS.

Light from the Sun takes roughly how long to reach Earth?

• 8 seconds
• 8 minutes
• 8 hours
• 8 days

Answer: 8 minutes. The Sun is about 150 million km away and light covers about 3 lakh km a second, so the trip takes about 8 minutes 20 seconds. You always see the Sun as it was 8 minutes ago.

Which planet is tipped so far over that it rolls around the Sun on its side?

• Mercury
• Mars
• Jupiter
• Uranus

Answer: Uranus. Uranus's axis is tilted about 98 degrees, probably after a giant collision long ago. Its year lasts 84 Earth years, so each pole gets about 42 years of sunlight and then 42 years of darkness.

On 23 August 2023, Chandrayaan-3's lander Vikram touched down near which part of the Moon, a first for any country?

• The south pole region
• The north pole region
• The Sea of Tranquillity
• The far side's equator

Answer: The south pole region. Vikram landed near the lunar south pole. India now marks 23 August as National Space Day.

Which is the largest moon in the solar system, wider even than the planet Mercury?

• Titan
• Our Moon
• Ganymede
• Europa

Answer: Ganymede. Jupiter's Ganymede is about 5,260 km across, wider than Mercury (about 4,880 km). It is also the only moon known to have its own magnetic field.

ISRO's Aditya-L1 watches the Sun from a balance point about 15 lakh km from Earth. The 'L' in L1 honours which mathematician?

• Laplace
• Lagrange
• Lorentz
• Leibniz

Answer: Lagrange. L1 is the first Lagrange point, named after Joseph-Louis Lagrange, where the pulls of the Sun and Earth balance. From a halo orbit around it, Aditya-L1 sees the Sun without any eclipses.

In February 2017, ISRO's PSLV-C37 set a world record. How many satellites did it launch on one rocket?

• 20
• 57
• 143
• 104

Answer: 104. PSLV-C37 carried 104 satellites, most of them small nanosatellites from abroad. The record stood until SpaceX's Transporter-1 launched 143 in 2021.

Launched in 1977, which spacecraft is now the farthest human-made object from Earth?

• Voyager 2
• Pioneer 10
• New Horizons
• Voyager 1

Answer: Voyager 1. Voyager 1 overtook Pioneer 10 as the most distant spacecraft in 1998, and in 2012 it became the first to enter interstellar space.