Question 1

True or false: The U.S. flag planted on the Moon during Apollo 11 is still standing upright today.

Accepted Answer

False. The flag was knocked over by the lunar module's ascent engine as the astronauts lifted off; Buzz Aldrin witnessed it through the window.

Question 2

True or false: The Soviet Union secretly landed a cosmonaut on the Moon just hours before Apollo 11.

Accepted Answer

False. No Soviet cosmonaut ever landed on the Moon. Their lunar program failed, and this is a persistent conspiracy myth with zero evidence.

Question 3

True or false: The Apollo 11 lunar module had no seats for the astronauts; they stood during landing.

Accepted Answer

True. Due to weight constraints, the lunar module had no seats. Armstrong and Aldrin stood tethered to the floor, relying on their suits for cushioning.

Question 4

True or false: Neil Armstrong's famous first words on the Moon were scripted by NASA public relations.

Accepted Answer

False. Armstrong claimed he improvised the line after landing. He later said he forgot the 'a' before 'man,' making it slightly off-script.

Question 5

True or false: The Apollo missions left several mirrors on the Moon that scientists use for laser ranging experiments.

Accepted Answer

True. Retroreflectors placed by Apollo 11, 14, and 15 are used for lunar laser ranging experiments, measuring Earth-Moon distance precisely.

Question 6

True or false: The Moon smells like spent gunpowder according to Apollo astronauts who described the dust.

Accepted Answer

True. Astronauts reported the lunar dust smelled like burnt gunpowder or cap gun residue, likely due to solar wind reacting with the dust.

Question 7

True or false: During the Moon landing, the computer had less processing power than a modern pocket calculator.

Accepted Answer

True. The Apollo Guidance Computer had about 64 kilobytes of memory and performed around 85,000 instructions per second—far less than even a basic modern pocket calculator's processing capabilities.

Question 8

True or false: The Apollo lunar surface photographs do not show stars because the camera exposures were set for the bright sunlit surface.

Accepted Answer

True. The cameras used fast shutter speeds and small apertures to avoid overexposing the bright lunar landscape, making the faint stars invisible in the images.

Moon Landing Trivia Questions