Space Quiz for Kids: 36 Funny Questions About the Sun, Moon and Stars – with a Certificate
A funny space quiz for kids 6 and up: 36 questions about the sun, moon, stars and space travel in three levels, with explanations, an astronaut certificate and all questions to print – perfect for birthday parties and school.
Shooting Star (ages 6 and up)
- What is the moon made of? Answer: Rock and dust. The holes that look a bit like cheese are craters. The Apollo astronauts brought 842 pounds (382 kg) of moon rock back to Earth – and not a crumb of cheese.
- Why does the moon shine? Answer: The sun lights it up. The moon doesn't glow by itself; it reflects sunlight. And its rock is actually quite dark, about as dark as old asphalt.
- How many Earths would fit inside the sun? Answer: More than a million. About 1.3 million Earths would fit inside the sun. And 109 Earths fit side by side across it.
- What is a shooting star? Answer: A speck of space dust burning up in the air. Shooting stars are usually tiny, often smaller than a grain of sand. They zoom into the air so fast that they burn up high above us. The real stars stay right where they are.
- What color is the sun when you see it from space? Answer: White. In space the sun looks white. It only looks yellow or orange from here because the air scatters some of the blue light to the side.
- Which planet has the most famous rings? Answer: Saturn. Saturn's rings are made of countless chunks of ice and rock. Jupiter, Uranus and Neptune have rings too, but much fainter ones. And Saturn also has more than 200 moons!
- Why do astronauts in space eat tortillas instead of bread? Answer: Bread crumbs would float around. In weightlessness, crumbs don't fall to the floor – they float through the space station and into eyes, noses and equipment. Tortillas hardly make any crumbs.
- How long does sunlight take to reach us? Answer: About 8 minutes. Light is the fastest thing there is, and it still takes about 8 minutes and 19 seconds to travel the 93 million miles to us.
- How high could you jump on the moon? Answer: About six times as high as on Earth. The moon pulls on you only one sixth as strongly as the Earth. With a heavy spacesuit it's a bit less, though.
- Is the sun a star? Answer: Yes, our closest star. The sun is a perfectly ordinary star. All the other stars are suns too – just so far away that they look like tiny dots.
- Which is heavier: a pound of stardust or a pound of feathers? Answer: They weigh the same. Gotcha? A pound is a pound! By the way, thousands of tons of dust from space drift down onto the Earth every year – onto your roof too.
- Why does it get dark at night? Answer: The Earth spins and our side turns away from the sun. The sun is always shining. The Earth spins around once a day. When we're on the shadow side, it's night where we are – and day on the other side of the Earth.
Rocket (ages 9 and up)
- Why do we always see the same side of the moon? Answer: It spins exactly once while it goes around the Earth once. The moon takes the same time to go around the Earth as it does to spin around once: about 27 days. That's why it always shows us the same face.
- Which planet is the hottest? Answer: Venus. Venus has a thick blanket of carbon dioxide that traps the heat. It's over 460 °C (860 °F) there – hotter than any oven.
- What happens to your height in space? Answer: You get a little taller. Without gravity nothing squeezes your spine together. Astronauts grow up to about 2 inches (5 cm) taller – and shrink back when they return to Earth.
- What is a light-year? Answer: A distance: how far light travels in a year. A light-year is about 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km). Even the nearest star after the sun is more than 4 light-years away.
- What is our galaxy called? Answer: The Milky Way. The Milky Way is made of 100 to 400 billion stars. From dark places you can see it as a bright, milky band stretching across the sky.
- What happens during a solar eclipse? Answer: The moon moves in front of the sun. Long ago some people really did believe in a dragon! Today we know the moon is exactly between the sun and the Earth. Only watch it with special eclipse glasses.
- Why does the moon have so many craters? Answer: Space rocks crashed into it. There's no wind or rain on the moon to smooth out the craters. So they stay – and the astronauts' footprints will probably last for millions of years.
- Who was the first person on the moon? Answer: Neil Armstrong. Neil Armstrong stepped onto the moon in July 1969, and Buzz Aldrin followed him almost 20 minutes later. And the man in the moon? That's just a pattern of dark patches.
- How fast does the International Space Station fly around the Earth? Answer: About 17,500 mph (28,000 km/h). The ISS goes around the Earth in about 90 minutes. That's why the astronauts on board see about 16 sunrises every day.
- Which planet would float in a giant bathtub? Answer: Saturn. Saturn is gigantic, but so light for its size that it would float on water. Too bad there's no bathtub big enough.
- Why do stars twinkle? Answer: The air above us wobbles and bends their light back and forth. The air is always moving, like the shimmer above a hot road. Planets twinkle less because they aren't dots but tiny disks.
- What happens to tears in space? Answer: They stick to your eye as a ball of water. Without gravity, tears don't roll down your cheek. They collect in a ball on your eye – and that can really sting.
Black Hole (ages 12+ and parents)
- What is hotter: the surface of the sun or a lightning bolt? Answer: A lightning bolt. Lightning heats the air for an instant to about 30,000 °C (54,000 °F) – about five times as hot as the sun's surface at around 5,500 °C. The sun's core, though, is 15 million °C.
- Which stars are the hottest? Answer: The blue ones. With stars it's the other way around from a faucet: red stars are the coolest at about 3,000 °C, blue ones reach 20,000 °C and more. Our sun is somewhere in between.
- You weigh 66 pounds (30 kg) on Earth. What does a scale show on the moon? Answer: About 11 pounds (5 kg). On the moon you're made of just as much stuff as on Earth. But the moon pulls on you only one sixth as strongly – so the scale shows about 11 pounds.
- How many stars can you see on a really dark night without binoculars? Answer: A few thousand. Far away from cities it's a few thousand at once. In a bright city you often can't see even a hundred. The billions of stars of the Milky Way blur into a faint band.
- How old is the sun? Answer: About 4.6 billion years. The sun is about 4.6 billion years old, so it's roughly halfway through its life. The dinosaurs are real youngsters by comparison: the first ones lived about 230 million years ago.
- What is a black hole? Answer: A place where gravity is so strong that not even light can escape. Black holes form, for example, when giant stars collapse at the end of their lives. Don't worry: the nearest known one is well over a thousand light-years away.
- How long would an airplane take to fly to the sun? Answer: Almost 19 years nonstop. The sun is about 93 million miles away. An airplane at 560 mph would need almost 19 years, and a car at 62 mph more than 170 years.
- What is an exoplanet? Answer: A planet that orbits another star. Exo means outside: since the 1990s, scientists have discovered more than 6,000 planets outside our solar system. And Pluto? It really was demoted to a dwarf planet in 2006 – so it is an ex-planet, just not an exoplanet.
- Which planet rolls around the sun lying on its side, so to speak? Answer: Uranus. Uranus's axis is tipped so far over that it almost lies on its side. That gives each of its poles 42 years of daylight followed by 42 years of night.
- Why is the sky blue? Answer: The air scatters blue light more than red light. Sunlight contains all colors. The air spreads blue light in all directions the most, so the whole sky glows blue. In the evening the light's path through the air is longer – then orange and red are left.
- How many people have walked on the moon so far? Answer: Twelve. Between 1969 and 1972, six Apollo missions landed on the moon with two astronauts each. With the Artemis program, NASA wants to bring people back there.
- Why can't you see stars in the photos of the moon landings? Answer: The brightly lit moon surface outshone them. The cameras were set for the sunlit ground of the moon. The exposure was far too short for the faint stars – just like a phone photo at night with a bright streetlight in the picture.
How to turn the quiz into a party game
- Split the guests into two or three rocket teams. A grown-up from Mission Control reads out the questions, the teams talk it over and hold up a card with A, B or C. Every right answer earns a star. At the end, every child gets their own astronaut certificate.
Questions about the quiz
- What age is the space quiz for? The Shooting Star level suits kids from about 6, Rocket from 9 and Black Hole from 12 – plenty of grown-ups start scratching their heads there too. For younger children, simply read the questions aloud.
- How many questions are there? 36 questions, twelve in each level. Each has three answers and a short explanation of why the right answer is right.
- Can I print the quiz? Yes. "Print questions" gives you a list of all questions with the answers – perfect for birthday parties, lessons and long car rides.
- Are names or results stored? No. The quiz runs entirely in your browser. The name for the certificate is never stored or sent anywhere.