Our Solar System
Deep Space
Rocket Science
Stellar Life
Houston, We Have A Problem
100
This is the largest planet in our solar system and is a gas giant. It is characterized by its persistent anticyclonic storm that was first officially observed in 1831 but may have been observed as early as 1665. It has a total of 95 officially recognized moons, 4 of which are named Io, Callisto, Ganymede and Europa. It was actually the first of the Sun's planets to form!
What is Jupiter!
100
This celestial object is not quite deep space object as it exists within the Milky Way, but it's cool enough to include! Discovered in 1919 by Edward Emerson Barnard, this object obscures roughly 3700 stars from our sight unless we use the Very Large Telescope in Cerro Paranal, Chile.
What is Barnard 68, the molecular cloud!
100
A rocket doesn't need air to push against. In fact, the same principle that lets a balloon zoom around a room after you release it allows a rocket to accelerate through empty space. As per this principle, ejecting mass in one direction changes the spacecraft's momentum in the opposite direction.
What is Conservation of Momentum!
100
This is the stage when a star fuses hydrogen into helium in its core. This nuclear fusion creates outward pressure that balances with the inward gravity of the star. In order to be in this stage, a star must be stable and active.
What is the main sequence!
100
On January 27, 1967 this spacecraft suffered a catastrophic failure during a lauch pad test. A flash fire swept through the command module, killing astronauts Virgil Grissom, Edward White and Roger Chaffee.
What is Apollo 1.
200
This gas giant is known for its spectacular rings that are formed mainly of ice particles. This planet is th only planet that we currently know of that is less dense than water! If you had a pool big enough and put this planet in it, it would float! It has 293 confirmed moons, much more than any other planet in our solar system. Its largest moon, Titan, comprises about 90% of the mass in orbit around this planet and its second largest moon, Rhea, may have its own ring system.
What is Saturn!
200
This area within our universe, roughly 330 million light-years wide and 700 million light-years away from Earth, is categorized by its emptiness. While an area of its size should hold 2000 galazies, this area only contains at most 60. Scientists think that spaces like this are formed between the filaments that make up our universe.
What is the Boötes Void or the Great Nothing!
200
This rocket, weighing in at 6.2 million pounds fully fueld and measuring in at 363 feet tall, was incredibly powerful. With its 5 F-1 engines it generated 7.6 million pounds of thrust at liftoff! Each first-stage engine required a fuel pump driven by a motor producing roughly 55,000 horsepower, which totaled to 275,000 horsepower just to pump the fuel! Its first flight was an unmanned flight in 1967 and it's finally flight was in 1973 when it helped bring the Sky Lab space station into orbit. Between those two dates it helped launch several missions including Apollo 11! To this day it is one of the most powerful machines we have ever successfully operated.
What is the Saturn V Rocket!
200
Many stars eventually expand into a bigger, cooler phase of existence after exhausting most of the hydrogen in its core. When the outward pressure of nuclear fusion disappears, gravity shrinks the core of star, which simultaniously makes it hotter on the inside. This heat will ignite a shell of hydrogen that surrounds the core, forcing the outer layer to expand rapidly into enourmous sizes.Our star may eventually become on of these, and stay that way for a few hundred million years!
What are Red Giants!
200
On April 24, 1967 this spacecraft suffered a catastrophic prachute failure upon reentry that resulted in the loss of Cosmonaut Vladimir Komarov.
What is the Soyuz 1.
300
This planet sits closest to the sun, though it is not the hotest planet. Its surface reaches as high as 430 degrees celcius during the day, and -180 degrees celcius at night. It does not have any moons but it IS the fastest orbiting planet! One solar day on this planet is equal to 176 Earth days, while one year is equal to 88 Earth days!
What is Mercury!
300
These planetary masses are known for the fact that they do not orbit any star, nor are they part of any solar system. They come to be either through eviction from young star systems as gravitational chaos flings them out, or they can form through the collapsing of gas clouds, similar to how stars are born. Scientists estimate that the number of these masses in the Milky Way is in the billions or trillions, potentially outnumbering stars.
What are Rogue Planets!
300
Before modern liquid-fueled launch vehicles, this German weapon became the world's first long-range guided ballistic missile, the first artificial object to ever reach space and was eventually the ancestor of technology used to launch humans into space!
What is the V2 Rocket!
300
A low to medium mass star eventually ends it's life by shedding it's outer layers and leaving behind one of these hot, very dense remnants. These remnants have a mass similar to our Sun, but this mass is packed incredibly tightly into a space the size of Earth. There is a theoritical limit relating to how big these remnants can get called the Chandrasekhar Limit, which states that they cannot exceed 1.4 solar masses.
What are White Dwarf Stars!
300
This mission had to quickly abort its plans to land on the moon after an oxygen tank exploded. The commander for this mission was Jim Lovell, who had previously walked on the Moon!
What is Apollo 13.
400
This planet is the third brightest object in the sky, after the Sun and the Moon! Spinning slowly in the opposite direction of most planets, this planet is very similar in size and structure to Earth. Its thick atmosphere traps heat in a runaway greenhouse effect, making it the hottest planet in our solar system with surface temperatures hot enough to melt lead, about 467 degrees Celsius! Below the clouds that persist in its atmosphere, this planet as volcanoes and mountains!
What is Venus!
400
These celestial objects are the most magnetic objects in the known universe, with a magnetic field that is a trillion times stronger than that of Earth. They are a rare form of neutron star, formed from the collapsed cores of massive stars after a supernova and power high-energy X-ray and gamma-ray emissions through their decaying magnetic fields. They are so incredibly magnetic that if a human were to get near one it would distort the electron clouds in their atoms, tearing the person apart at a subatomic level.
What are Magnetars!
400
This crew and spacecraft currently hold the record for the fastest any human has ever traveled.
Bonus points if you can name how fast!
What is Apollo 10!
Bonus: 39,900 km/hr!
400
This incredible cosmic event can be bright enough to outshine entire galaxies and can release as much energy as our Sun willmin its whole lifetime. It happens during the final stage of a massive stars life, or when a specific remnant star triggers a runaway nuclear reaction, though it is given a specific name.
What is a Supernova! One caused by a white dwarf star is a type Ia supernova.
400
In 1960, this Soviet rocket exploded on the launch pad, killing more than 100 people in what became known as the Nedelin catastrophe.
What is the R-16 Rocket.
500
This ice giant planet is the most distant of our major planets in our solar system and is the only planet we cannot see with the naked eye. It is so far away that high noon, when the sun is at its brightest, would look like a dim twilight to someone on this planet. It was first observed by Galileo in 1612, when it was thought to be a stationary planet, and it was the first planet to be located through the use of mathematical predictions instead of observing the sky 200 years later. It has at least 5 main rings, named Galle, Leverrier, Lassell, Aragho and Adams.
What is Neptune!
500
At the center of this cosmic phenomenon lies an infinitely dense singularity, surrounded by a boundary called the event horizon from which not even light can escape. Matter is packed so tightly that not even light can escape. There are 4 types of this phenomenon including stellar mass, super-massive, intermediate mass and primordial.
Bonus points if you can name the one that is at the center of the Milky Way, and what type it is!
What are black holes!
Bonus: Sagittarius A* and it is a super-massive black hole!
500
This bizarre-looking rocket concept has no conventional combustion chamber or fuel tank, instead using a series of controlled nuclear explosions to propel a spacecraft forward. It was seriously studied by American scientists in the 1950s and '60s and considered to be a viable option, though it was never created and ceased being an option in 1965 when testing bans were put in place for fear of nuclear fallout.
What is Project Orion!
500
This very rare cosmic event happens when two neutron stars, or a neutron star and a black hole, crash into each other. This very violent crash creates heavy metals lkke gold, platinum, uranium, etc. and sends out gravitational waves. Most gold in the universe comes from these crashes!
What are kilonovas!
500
In 1986 this shuttle disaster occured just 73 seconds after liftoff, killing all 7 crew members inside, one of which was a civilian teacher. The cause of this disaster was the below freezing temperatures that compromised the rubber O-rings. Engineers warned management that this could be an issue, however it was ignored.
What is the Space Shuttle Challenger Disaster.
600
This ice giant was the first planet found with the aid of a telescope in 1781 by William Herschel, though he originally thought it was a star or comet and not a planet. Rotating at an almost 90 degree angle makes this planet appear to spin sideways, orbiting the Sun like a rolling ball. It has 28 confirmed moons, and two sets of rings named Alpha, Beta, Eta, Gamma, Delta, Lambda, Epsilon, Nu and Mu.
What is Uranus!
600
This protoplanetary nebula is located 5000 light-years away from Earth. It is known as the coldest place in the known universe, reaching a temperature as low as 1 degree Kelvin or -272.15 degrees Celsius, even colder than the background radiation of deep space. A protoplanetary nebula is a short-lived astronomical object that forms when a dying, intermediate-mass star sheds its outer gas layers. This incredibly rapid expansion is what has caused it to be so cold!
What is the Boomerang Nebula!
600
This was the first rocket to successfully carry a human into space, launching Yuri Gagarin in 1961. Its design evolved from an earlier Soviet ballistic missile called the R- Semyorka.
What is the Vostok Rocket!
600
When a massive stars core collapses, electrons and protons can combine to form these particles.
What are Neutrons!
600
This disaster occured on February 1st, 2003 as this spacecraft was in atmospheric reentry. The spacecraft disintegrated, killing all 7 crew members just 16 minutes before it was scheduled to land. This disaster was actually triggered during liftoff when a piece of insulation foam broke off the external tank and hit the left wing.
What is the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster.
700
This planet is one of the most explored bodies in our solar system! We have found much evidence that there may have been a lot more water on this planet than we once thought, creating the possibility for there to have been life on this planet. Scientists are currently looking for evidence of life having existed when this planet was warmer and wetter, and it is the only planet to which we have successfully sent rovers to. It has 2 moons, Phobos and Deimos.
What is Mars!
700
These cosmic objects spin incredibly fast, up to hundreds of times per second. As they spin, they flash visible, xray or gamma rays past Earth with a metronomic regularity, like a lighthouse. Some of these objects rival the precision of Earth's best atomic clocks, and when they were first discovered they were jokingly called LGM-1 (Little Green Men).
What are Pulsars!
700
This giant Soviet rocket was designed to carry humans to the Moon. First launching in 1969, itstood roughly 344 feet tall and used 30 engines on its first stage. All four of its launch attempts ended in failure, though thankfully they were not crewed launches.
What is the N1 Rocket!
700
A millisecond after the Big Bang, pure energy cooled into the universes first fundamental particles. Bound together in a soup of sorts, these very raw ingredients rapidly condensed into heavier composite particles as the cosmos expanded. Within the first fractions of a second after the Big Bang the firsts of these particles was created. Within microseconds, some of them were bonding together and within minutes we had the first atomic nuclei. The cosmos stayed like this until 380,000 years later when it had cooled enough for these nuclei to capture wandering electrons, creating the first ever atoms!
What are quarks, leptons and gluons!
Fun fact: these particles still make up all visible matter we see today. In fact, every atom in your body contains 3 valence quarks, and shifting seas of quarks and antiquarks all held together by gluon! Leptons include electrons and neutrinos!
700
This unmanned NASA spacecraft was destroyed on September 23 1999 when it flew too close to Mars. The cause of this error was human error: Lockheed Martin engineering teams that supplied the thruster data to NASA did so in imperial units (pound-seconds) while NASA mission control software used metric units (newton-seconds).
What is the Mars Climate Orbiter!
800
This ancient object, formed roughly 4.5 billion years ago as gravity gathered material in the early Solar System, is one of four rocky worlds found closest to a particular star. Its surface is divided between solid terrain and a vast amount of liquid, while an unseen layer of gases surrounds it and helps moderate temperatures and filter incoming radiation. Far below the surface, moving metallic material generates an invisible field that interacts with particles arriving from its star, sometimes producing glowing phenomena near its poles. It has no rings, is accompanied by a single natural satellite whose presence influences its motion, and is presently the only known place where life is abundant. NASA spacecraft continue to observe its oceans, atmosphere, ice, land, and interior from above and beyond.
What is Earth!
These pictures were taken on the most recent Artemis 2 mission to the moon!
800
This exoplanet, located 750 light years away in the Draco constellation, is the darkest known planet in the universe. It reflects less than 1% of the starlight that hits it! One reason for this might be that, even though it is a gas giant, it's incredible amounts of heat (980 degrees celsius) prevent reflexive clouds like those on Jupiter from forming. Its atmosphere contains light-absorbing elements like vaporized sodium, potassium, and titanium oxide, though scientists note these do not fully account for its extreme pitch-black nature, and we still do not have answers.
What is TrES-2b!
800
The sound of a rocket launch isn't actually what causes most of the visible destruction around the launchpad. At close range this type of energy can be powerful enough to damage spacecraft, which is why launchpads use enormous water-deluge systems.
What is Acoustic Energy!
800
These itty bitty highenergy subatomic particles travel across the universe from violent cosmic events including black holes, active galaxies/galaxy creation, and exploding stars, passing right through planets and human bodies without stopping! They have absolutely no electrical charge and scientists are able to track them using specialized detectors, including one that is buried deep in Antarctic ice!
What are Cosmic Neutrinos!
800
On June 30 1971, the crew of this Soviet mission became the only humans known to have died while actually in space, rather than during launch or reentry. What caused this disaster was a breathing-vent valve shaking open prematurely which caused the cabin to depressurize, killing the entire crew.
What is the Soyuz 11.
900
This celestial ring exists on the outskirts of our solar system. Shaped like a doughnut, it holds millions of frozen objects including dwarf planets like Pluto, Eris, Haumea and Makemake (which all have moons). Scientists think that this ring was formed from remnants left over from the formation of our solar systems, and some of the objects within it are primordial (existing from the very beginning of time) and have changed very little.
What is the Kuiper Belt!
900
Accidentally detected as persistent noise by Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson in 1965, this faint background glow fills all space at roughly 2.73 Kelvin. Released during the Recombination era about 380,000 years after the Big Bang, its high-energy wavelengths have since been stretched by cosmic expansion into the microwave spectrum. Today, its minute temperature fluctuations—mapped by space missions like WMAP and Planck—reveal the early density ripples that grew into galaxies, providing the definitive blackbody spectrum proof for the origin of our cosmos.
What is the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB)!
This is a temperature map of the CMB!
900
This was the first reusable orbital spacecraft. Rather than throwing away the entire launch vehicle, it returned to Earth and could be flown again, fundamentally changing how NASA approached human spaceflight. Used between 1981 and 2011, there were 6 of these orbiters created: Enterprise, Columbia, Challenger, Discovery, Atlantis and Endeavour. Only 2 of these had catastrophic, fatal failures.
What are the Space Shuttles!
900
These sub-stellar objects are often called failed stars. They are much too small to sustain normal hydrogen fusion but heavier ones of this object can briefly fuse deuterium, a heavy hydrogen! Some of bigger size can also briefly fuse lithium!
What are Brown Dwarfs!
900
In 1986, this Soviet space station was launched and later became the centerpiece of a series of dangerous incidents, including a collision with a Progress cargo spacecraft. It was deorbited on March 23 2001.
What is the Mir space station!
1000
These celestial bodies in our solar system orbit the Sun between Jupiter and Neptune, crossing the orbit of one or more of the giant planets as they move. They exhibit behaviours of both comets and asteroids (comets = formed in the cold outer regions of our solar system, like the Oort Cloud, asteroids = formed close to the Sun in the Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter), and are sometimes slingshot out of our solar system by the gas giants it crosses paths with due to its unstable path.
What are Centaurs!
1000
Though they sound very made up, these two invisible phenomena combined make up a vast majority of the universe! One acts as an unseen gravitational "glue" holding galaxies together, while the other is a mysterious pressure driving the accelerated expansion of space itself.
Bonus point if you can tell me both what visible things in our universe are called in a general sense and what percentage they make up of our universe!
What is dark matter and dark energy!
Bonus: Baryonic or ordinary matter, and just 5%! The rest is taken up by the invisible dark matter!
1000
In order for rockets to launch successfully and move through space, this type of mass must be continuously expelled. It is this matter that a rocket expels backward to generate forward thrust through conservation of momentum and Newton's Third Law (every action has an equal and opposite reaction). This is why carrying propellant is simultaneously necessary and one of the biggest challenges of rocketry.
What is reaction mass!
1000
THese hypothetical primordial objects may have been powered by dark matter, instead of what we see in todays objects of the same kind. Rather an nuclear fusion, these objects would trap particles of dark matter inside gas clouds where they would collide and be annihilated inside, producing intense heat that would prevent standard fusion. We have actually been able to potentially see promordial objects that fit this discription, so they may not just be theory!
What are Dark Stars!
1000
This British Mars lander launched on June 2 2003 and was part of the European Space Agency's Mars Express mission. Named after Charles Darwin's ship it vanished after attempting to land on Christmas Day. Photos acquired in 2015 from NASA's Mars Reconnaissnce Orbiter showed that the lander DID land, but failed to open its solar panels fully, blocking the radio antenna.
What is the Beagle 2!
