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59 free Apollo 11 trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Apollo 11 put the first humans on the Moon on 20 July 1969, and this quiz walks through the mission hour by hour. It starts before launch: how the crew came together, why Collins designed a patch with no names, why the modules were called Columbia and Eagle, and the argument over who would step out first. Then comes the flight itself: the Saturn V lifting off before a million spectators, the 1201 and 1202 alarms, the boulder field Armstrong flew past, the fuel left in the tank, and Charlie Duke breathing again in Houston. The moonwalk gets its due, from the first step and the missing 'a' to Aldrin's communion, the flag that fell over on liftoff, the plaque, the retroreflector that still works, the silicon disc of goodwill messages and the felt-tip pen that armed the ascent engine. Then the return: Luna 15 crashing while they were still on the surface, splashdown near USS Hornet, three weeks in quarantine, ticker-tape parades for six million people and the Giant Leap world tour. The final stretch covers the men themselves: Armstrong the civilian test pilot, Aldrin the MiG killer with a doctorate, and Collins, born in Rome, who later ran the National Air and Space Museum. Easy questions suit anyone who knows the famous line; the expert tier is for spaceflight obsessives. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the mission and its crew, and the supporting sentence is attached to each question. Our separate Apollo program and Apollo 13 quizzes cover the rest of the story.
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Q 01On what date did Apollo 11's lunar module land on the Moon?
July 20, 1969
The lunar module touched down on July 20, 1969, at 20:17 UTC, four days after the July 16 launch and four days before the July 24 splashdown.
Q 02Which crew member stayed in lunar orbit aboard the command module while the other two landed?
Michael Collins
He was the second person to orbit the Moon alone, after John Young on Apollo 10.
Q 03What was the call sign of the Apollo 11 lunar module?
Eagle
Eagle was the lunar module's call sign, taken from the bald eagle on the mission patch; the command module was Columbia.
Q 04The command module was named Columbia after Columbiad, a giant cannon in a novel by which author?
Jules Verne
Jules Verne's From the Earth to the Moon (1865) fires its travellers Moonward from the Columbiad, a giant cannon sunk into the ground in Florida.
Q 05Which flight director was on console for Apollo 11's lunar landing?
Gene Kranz
Gene Kranz led the White Team on console for the powered descent and landing; he had the control-room doors locked before it began.
Q 06What does the eagle on the Apollo 11 patch carry in its talons?
An olive branch
An olive branch is clutched in the talons; it was first drawn in the beak and moved after Bob Gilruth felt the open talons looked too warlike.
Q 07Roughly how many spectators watched Apollo 11 launch from nearby beaches and highways?
One million
One million spectators, by the standard estimate, packed the beaches and highways around Cape Kennedy on launch morning, July 16, 1969.
Q 08Which Soviet probe launched three days before Apollo 11 in a bid to return lunar samples first?
Luna 15
Luna 15, launched on July 13, 1969, crashed into Mare Crisium about two hours before Armstrong and Aldrin lifted off from the surface.
Q 09In which lunar 'sea' did the Apollo 11 lunar module land?
Sea of Tranquility
The Sea of Tranquility site had been judged flat and smooth from Ranger 8, Surveyor 5 and Lunar Orbiter photographs.
Q 10During the descent, the guidance computer flashed which pair of program alarm codes?
1201 and 1202
The 1201 and 1202 alarms meant executive overflow: spurious rendezvous-radar data overloaded the computer, which shed low-priority tasks and kept guiding the descent.
Q 11Which Mission Control engineer told Steve Bales it was safe to keep descending despite the alarms?
Jack Garman
Jack Garman, a backroom computer engineer who kept a handwritten list of alarm codes, told Steve Bales the descent could continue; Margaret Hamilton led the MIT software team.
Q 12Armstrong took over as the computer steered toward a boulder field around which crater?
West crater
West crater, ringed by large boulders, was where the automatic targeting was taking the lander; Armstrong later likened it to a football field in size and flew past it to smoother ground.
Q 13By real-time data, how many seconds of fuel remained when the lunar module landed?
25
Q 21Roughly how far into the hard lunar surface were the astronauts able to push the flagpole?
About 6 inches
About 6 inches was as deep as the pole would go into the hard subsurface, so it stood precariously; the telescoping crossbar also jammed short of full extension.
Q 22What happened to the American flag when the lunar module's ascent stage lifted off?
It toppled over
It toppled over: Aldrin glimpsed it falling in the ascent-engine exhaust, and later crews planted their flags farther from the lunar module.
Q 23From where did Nixon make his 'most historic phone call' to the astronauts on the Moon?
The White House
The real-time data gave 25 seconds of fuel left; post-mission analysis put it nearer 50 seconds, with 216 pounds of usable propellant remaining.
Q 14Which CAPCOM answered Armstrong's landing call from the surface with the words 'We're breathing again'?
Charlie Duke
Charlie Duke, the CAPCOM for the landing, was so relieved he stumbled over his reply; he walked on the Moon himself on Apollo 16 in 1972.
Q 15For decades Aldrin believed the decision that Armstrong would step out first was driven largely by what?
Where the LM hatch was
Where the LM hatch was: it hinged on Aldrin's side and opened inward, leaving the commander nearest the exit; Chris Kraft later revealed managers had met to ensure Armstrong went first.
Q 16About how long after landing did Armstrong step onto the surface?
Six and a half hours
Six and a half hours, roughly: touchdown at 20:17 UTC was followed by the first step at 02:56 UTC on July 21, after the crew skipped a planned rest period.
Q 17Armstrong's first words on the Moon are printed with which bracketed word he insisted he said?
A
The bracketed word is 'A': NASA prints the line as 'That's one small step for (a) man', and Armstrong maintained he said it, though it cannot be heard in the recording.
Q 18How many minutes after Armstrong did Aldrin step onto the Moon?
Nineteen
Nineteen minutes after Armstrong's 02:56 UTC first step, Aldrin came down the ladder at 03:15 and summed up the view in two words: magnificent desolation.
Q 19The moonwalk was broadcast live to an estimated audience of about how many people?
600 million
An estimated 600 million people, roughly a fifth of the world's population, watched live; the clearest pictures came through Honeysuckle Creek and then Parkes in Australia.
Q 20The first food and liquid consumed on the Moon were what?
Communion elements
Communion elements: Aldrin, a Presbyterian elder, privately ate a small piece of bread and sipped wine from a kit prepared by his pastor at Webster Presbyterian Church in Texas.
The White House: Nixon spoke from the Oval Office by a radio-telephone link relayed through Houston, after Frank Borman had persuaded him to drop a long prepared speech.
Q 24The plaque on the lunar module's ladder ends with which sentence?
We came in peace for all mankind
'We came in peace for all mankind' closes the text, set beneath two drawings of Earth's hemispheres and the signatures of the three astronauts and President Nixon.
Q 25About how much lunar material did Armstrong and Aldrin collect?
21.5 kg
The 21.5 kg of basalt, breccia and soil yielded three minerals new to science, including armalcolite, named for the three crew members.
Q 26Which Apollo 11 surface experiment remained in scientific use for more than 50 years?
The retroreflector array
The retroreflector array is a passive panel of corner-cube mirrors; lasers from Earth were being bounced off it in the 2020s, while the seismometer's uplink failed within weeks.
Q 27The astronauts' silicon disc left on the Moon carried goodwill messages from how many countries' leaders?
73
73 countries' leaders are represented on the disc, which is about the size of a 50-cent piece; the messages were etched at 1/200 scale.
Q 28The crew left memorial items on the surface, including a mission patch honouring which flight's crew?
Apollo 1
Apollo 1's patch, honouring Grissom, White and Chaffee, went into a bag with medals for cosmonauts Gagarin and Komarov, which Aldrin tossed from his sleeve pocket at the end of the moonwalk.
Q 29What did the crew use to push in the ascent-engine circuit breaker Aldrin had accidentally broken?
A felt-tip pen
A felt-tip pen, a Duro marker with a nonconductive tip, pushed the broken engine-arm breaker back in and let the ascent engine fire to get them off the Moon.
Q 30Which aircraft carrier recovered the Apollo 11 crew after splashdown in the Pacific?
USS Hornet
USS Hornet, with President Nixon aboard to greet them, picked up the crew on July 24, 1969, after the landing point was shifted to dodge a storm.