Think Like a Rocket Scientist? Take This NASA Quiz to Find Out

NASA’s launch operations in Florida are centered at the Kennedy Space Center. Located near Cape Canaveral, it has been the site of every U.S. human spaceflight since Apollo 7. It’s also a major hub for commercial space launches, making it a key site in American space history and development.

The International Space Station (ISS) is a joint project involving NASA and other space agencies around the world. It has been continuously inhabited since 2000 and serves as a microgravity research laboratory, orbiting the Earth every 90 minutes and enabling scientific experiments in various fields like biology and physics.

Apollo 13 is famously known as a “successful failure” because although the spacecraft experienced a major malfunction that prevented a Moon landing, the crew returned safely to Earth. The crisis showcased NASA’s ability to respond with ingenuity under pressure and is often cited as a triumph of problem-solving and teamwork.

NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has been orbiting Earth since 1990, capturing incredibly detailed images of deep space and expanding our understanding of the universe. It’s known for producing iconic images like the Pillars of Creation and for helping determine the age and expansion rate of the universe.

The first successful human moon landing occurred in 1969 during the Apollo 11 mission. Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the Moon while Michael Collins remained in lunar orbit. It remains one of NASA’s greatest milestones and a pivotal moment in 20th-century history.

NASA’s Artemis program is designed to return humans to the Moon, including the first woman and the first person of color. It aims to establish a sustainable human presence on the lunar surface and serve as a stepping stone for eventual missions to Mars, signaling a new era in deep space exploration.

NASA stands for National Aeronautics and Space Administration. It was established in 1958 as a civilian space agency for the U.S., primarily focused on space exploration, scientific discovery, and aeronautics research. It's one of the most recognized government agencies globally, overseeing missions like Apollo, the Space Shuttle, the Mars rovers, and deep-space telescopes.

The James Webb Space Telescope is built to study the early formation of galaxies, stars, and planets. Unlike Hubble, which observes mostly in visible and ultraviolet light, JWST focuses on infrared, allowing it to peer deeper into the cosmic past and through interstellar dust to reveal previously hidden phenomena.

Perseverance is NASA’s latest Mars rover, which landed in 2021 inside Jezero Crater. It is part of the Mars 2020 mission and was designed to look for signs of ancient life, collect samples, and test new technologies, including the Ingenuity helicopter—the first powered aircraft to fly on another planet.

Voyager 2 is the only spacecraft to have visited Uranus, flying by in 1986. Voyager 1 never visited the planet, taking a different trajectory. Voyager 2's flyby provided critical data about Uranus’s atmosphere, rings, and moons, offering the only close-up images we’ve ever had of the ice giant.