Planets
This planet’s magnetosphere is so strong it creates intense radiation belts that would be lethal to unshielded astronauts.
What is Jupiter?
The first human spaceflight mission.
What is Vostok 1?
These structures protect spacecraft from micrometeoroids and thermal extremes.
What are multi-layer insulation blankets?
The spectral class of the Sun.
What is G2V?
In 2001: A Space Odyssey, this onboard AI malfunctions and tries to kill the crew.
Who is HAL 9000?
This terrestrial planet has a surface pressure over 90 times greater than Earth’s.
What is Venus?
This NASA mission first landed humans on the Moon.
What is Apollo 11?
This is the name for the system used to orient spacecraft without thrusters.
What is a reaction wheel system?
The closest star system to Earth besides the Sun.
What is Alpha Centauri?
The planet Arrakis — the only source of the spice melange — is central to this sci-fi universe.
What is Dune?
This planet’s atmospheric circulation results in the fastest sustained winds in the solar system, reaching up to 1,200 mph.
What is Neptune?
The rover that found signs of ancient water on Mars.
What is Curiosity?
The first ion propulsion spacecraft launched by NASA.
What is Deep Space 1?
This is the term for the distance light travels in one year.
What is a light-year?
This author coined the Three Laws of Robotics, influencing decades of science fiction.
Who is Isaac Asimov?
This planet’s orbit is the most eccentric (non-circular) of all the classical planets.
What is Mercury?
This mission became the first spacecraft to orbit two different celestial bodies: Vesta and Ceres.
What is Dawn?
The communication delay between Earth and Mars can range up to this amount of time one-way.
What is 22 minutes?
The name for a spinning neutron star that emits radiation like a lighthouse.
What is a pulsar?
The 1977 Golden Record launched aboard Voyager 1 contains music from this composer, whose "Brandenburg Concerto No. 2" is among the included pieces.
Who is Johann Sebastian Bach?
This planet may have cryovolcanoes—ice volcanoes—that suggest the presence of a subsurface ocean.
What is Pluto?
NASA’s mission to “touch the Sun.”
What is Parker Solar Probe?
This term describes a trajectory that uses planetary gravity to gain speed.
What is gravity assist (or slingshot)?
This method, which detects the tiny wobble in a star’s motion caused by an orbiting planet, was the first successful technique used to confirm the existence of an exoplanet.
What is the radial velocity method?
(Also acceptable: “Doppler spectroscopy”)
This real-life astrophysicist voiced himself in The Simpsons and advised on films like Interstellar.
Who is Kip Thorne?