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Space Race Trivia Questions

How much do you really know about Space Race? Below are 8 true or false statements. Click each one to reveal the answer and explanation.

1.

The US won the Space Race by landing on the Moon, ending all competition immediately.

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Easy
✗ FALSE

The Space Race gradually faded after Apollo, but the Soviets focused on space stations, and competition continued covertly.

2.

The first animal to orbit Earth was a dog named Laika aboard Sputnik 2.

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Easy
✓ TRUE

Laika, a stray dog, launched on Sputnik 2 in 1957, but she died hours after liftoff due to overheating.

3.

Yuri Gagarin’s Vostok 1 spacecraft landed with him still inside after reentry.

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Medium
✗ FALSE

Gagarin ejected at 7 km altitude and parachuted separately, as Vostok had no landing systems for a crew.

4.

Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin planted the American flag on the Moon in 1969.

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Medium
✓ TRUE

They planted it during Apollo 11, but the flag fell over when the ascent module launched because it was too close.

5.

The first woman in space, Valentina Tereshkova, flew solo aboard Vostok 6 in 1963.

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Medium
✓ TRUE

Tereshkova spent nearly three days in orbit, making more than 48 revolutions around Earth alone.

6.

A pen was used to fix a broken switch on Apollo 12’s lunar module during flight.

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Hard
✗ FALSE

That famous fix happened on Apollo 12’s command module, not the lunar module, using a felt-tip pen to override a stuck switch.

7.

The Soviet Union secretly landed a cosmonaut on the Moon before the US in 1968.

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Hard
✗ FALSE

No cosmonaut ever landed on the Moon; the Soviet lunar program failed after multiple unmanned crashes.

8.

The US considered using nuclear bombs to launch spacecraft during the Space Race.

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Hard
✓ TRUE

Project Orion studied nuclear pulse propulsion in the 1950s and 60s, but it was abandoned due to fallout risks.

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