Quiz of the Day
NASA's Birthday: Space Exploration History
Wednesday, 29 July 2026
Founded in 1958 to answer Sputnik — NASA's 67 years of missions, discoveries, and dreams
1. NASA was established on July 29, 1958, replacing which predecessor agency?
- Army Ballistic Missile Agency
- National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA)
- Air Force Space Command
- Naval Research Laboratory
NACA was founded in 1915 to conduct aeronautical research — it had no space mandate. When Sputnik shocked America in October 1957, President Eisenhower realised a civilian space agency was needed. NACA's 8,000 employees and facilities became the core of the new NASA when it opened for business on October 1, 1958.
2. The Hubble Space Telescope, launched in 1990, initially produced blurry images due to what flaw?
- A faulty camera sensor
- Software corruption during launch
- Incorrect orbital insertion
- A mirror ground to the wrong prescription by 2.2 micrometres
The mirror was ground with extraordinary precision — but to the wrong specification, off by just 2.2 micrometres (about 1/50th the width of a human hair). A corrective optics package was installed by astronauts during a 1993 servicing mission. After correction, Hubble delivered images that transformed astronomy and cosmology.
3. The Voyager 1 spacecraft, launched in 1977, became the first human-made object to enter interstellar space in which year?
- 2004
- 1998
- 2012
- 2018
Voyager 1 crossed the heliopause — the boundary between solar wind and interstellar space — in August 2012, confirmed by scientists in 2013. As of 2024, it's about 24 billion kilometres from the Sun, travelling at roughly 17 km/s. NASA still communicates with it; signals take over 22 hours each way at the speed of light.
4. NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, launched in 2021, is positioned at which special gravitational point in space?
- Between Mars and Jupiter
- The Moon's orbit
- Low Earth orbit
- Lagrange point L2
The James Webb Space Telescope sits at L2 — a gravitational balance point about 1.5 million km from Earth in the direction away from the Sun. This keeps it in a stable orbit while Earth and Sun remain at its back, allowing its sunshield to block their heat. Webb operates at -233°C, necessary to detect faint infrared signals from the early universe.
5. Which NASA mission provided the first images of Pluto's surface in 2015?
- Dawn
- Cassini
- New Horizons
- Juno
New Horizons launched in January 2006 — the same year Pluto was reclassified as a dwarf planet. After a 9.5-year, 5-billion-km journey, it flew past Pluto in July 2015 at 14 km/s, snapping photos revealing a heart-shaped nitrogen ice plain named 'Tombaugh Regio' after Pluto's discoverer. The images transformed planetary science.
6. The Space Shuttle flew 135 missions between 1981 and 2011. How many orbiters were built?
- 3
- 9
- 7
- 5
Five orbiters flew in space: Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour. A sixth, Enterprise, was built for atmospheric test flights only. Two orbiters were lost in disasters — Challenger (1986, on launch) and Columbia (2003, on re-entry) — killing all 14 crew members. The remaining three are now in museums across the US.
7. Mars currently has how many active rovers operating on its surface?
- 2
- 3
- 1
- 4
As of 2024, NASA's Curiosity (active since 2012) and Perseverance (landed 2021) are operating on Mars. China's Zhurong rover, which landed in 2021, became dormant in 2022 due to dust on its solar panels. Perseverance has been collecting rock samples for a future Mars Sample Return mission — humanity's most ambitious planetary science program.
8. The 'Golden Record' on Voyager spacecraft contains greetings in 55 languages and music from around the world. Who chaired the committee that selected its contents?
- Carl Sagan
- Stephen Hawking
- Neil deGrasse Tyson
- Isaac Asimov
Sagan chaired the Golden Record committee, which included his wife-to-be Ann Druyan. The record contains music from Beethoven to Chuck Berry, sounds of Earth (rain, waves, heartbeats), 116 images, and greetings in 55 languages — a message in a bottle cast into an infinite cosmic ocean, with almost zero probability of being found.
9. The ISS has been continuously inhabited since which year?
- 2006
- 2000
- 1998
- 2003
The ISS has had a continuous human presence since November 2, 2000 — over 24 years without a gap. As of 2024, over 270 people from 21 countries have visited it. The station travels at 7.7 km/s, completes 15.5 orbits daily, and has hosted over 3,000 scientific experiments in that time.
10. NASA's Artemis program aims to establish a sustainable lunar presence. The Gateway — a small space station — will orbit where?
- At the L2 Lagrange point
- Low Earth orbit
- Geostationary orbit
- Around the Moon
The Lunar Gateway will orbit the Moon in a near-rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO) — a highly elliptical path that passes close to the lunar surface and extends far out. It will serve as a staging post for lunar surface missions, a base for scientific research, and a proving ground for Mars-mission technologies. International partners including ESA, JAXA, and CSA are contributing hardware.
11. What is the significance of the Drake Equation in the context of NASA's search for life?
- It estimates the number of communicating civilisations in the galaxy
- It predicts the habitability of exoplanets
- It models asteroid collision risks
- It calculates rocket fuel requirements for interstellar travel
Frank Drake developed his equation in 1961, the year NASA began its first SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) experiments. NASA has funded SETI research at various points in its history. The current focus is on biosignatures — chemical indicators of life in planetary atmospheres detectable by James Webb.
12. The Apollo Lunar Module's descent engine had an unusual feature for a rocket engine of the era — it used hypergolic propellants. What does 'hypergolic' mean?
- Fuelled by hydrogen
- Generating thrust through cold gas
- Self-igniting on contact without a spark
- Capable of multiple restarts
Hypergolic propellants ignite spontaneously when the fuel and oxidiser touch — no spark required. For a mission-critical engine with no backup ignition system, this was essential. The descent engine also had to throttle — an unusual capability in 1969 — to allow precise landing speed control as the module approached the surface.
13. NASA's budget as a percentage of the US federal budget peaked during the Apollo era. What was that peak percentage?
- Around 1%
- Around 4.5%
- Around 7%
- Around 2.5%
NASA's budget peaked at 4.41% of the US federal budget in 1966, as Apollo development costs soared. Today it receives about 0.5% — a fraction of the peak. Adjusted for inflation and as a share of federal spending, the Moon landing era represented an investment that would be unimaginable by today's political standards.
14. Which planet did NASA's Galileo spacecraft crash into intentionally in 2003 to prevent contamination of Europa?
- Jupiter
- Neptune
- Saturn
- Uranus
Galileo was deliberately guided into Jupiter's atmosphere when its fuel ran low, rather than risk it drifting and potentially crashing into Europa — where contamination with Earth microbes could compromise future searches for life. The spacecraft had spent 14 years studying Jupiter and its moons, returning data that transformed our understanding of the Jovian system.
15. What does the abbreviation 'JPL' stand for, the NASA centre that manages many robotic space missions?
- Johnson Physics Laboratory
- Jupiter Projects Lab
- Jupiter Propulsion Laboratory
- Jet Propulsion Laboratory
JPL was founded in 1936 by a group of Caltech students who experimented with rockets in the Arroyo Seco riverbed. NASA absorbed it in 1958, and it became the premier centre for robotic planetary exploration. Despite the name, JPL no longer works on jet propulsion — its mission evolved entirely to spacecraft and planetary science.