Chandrayaan Trivia
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49 free Chandrayaan trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Sep 2026.
India reached the Moon on a budget smaller than most Hollywood space films, lost a lander within sight of the surface, and came back to make the first soft landing anywhere near a lunar pole. Along the way its first orbiter changed what everyone thought they knew about the Moon being bone dry. These 49 questions run through all three missions: the 2008 orbiter and its instruments, the 2019 attempt and what went wrong in the final kilometres, the 2023 landing and the rover that followed, plus the rockets, the spaceport, the scientists who led each mission and what ISRO plans next. Every answer comes with a one-line explanation that adds something the headlines left out. Play it before a space-themed quiz night, use it in a classroom after National Space Day, or find out how much of the story you actually followed.
30 of 49 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Chandrayaan-3's landing broadcast drew eight million simultaneous viewers, then a record live stream on which platform?
YouTube
YouTube logged about eight million concurrent viewers on ISRO's channel, a record that stood until Brazilian channel CazéTV's 2026 World Cup coverage passed twelve million.
Q 02From which island spaceport on India's east coast, in Andhra Pradesh, did all three Chandrayaan missions launch?
Sriharikota
Sriharikota sits on a barrier island between Pulicat Lake and the Bay of Bengal, picked for its empty safety zone and nearness to the equator, which helps eastward launches.
Q 03Chandrayaan-2 and -3 each carried a lander named after which physicist, the founder of India's space programme?
Vikram Sarabhai
Vikram Sarabhai researched cosmic rays under C. V. Raman, and he died in 1971, before Aryabhata, the first Indian satellite he had set in motion, reached orbit in 1975.
Q 04Chandrayaan's six-wheeled rover is called Pragyan, a Sanskrit word meaning what?
Wisdom
Wisdom is what Pragyan means, and the rover cannot talk to mission control directly: everything it learns is relayed through its lander.
Q 05Which Russian lander crashed days before Chandrayaan-3 touched down, ending its bid to reach the south pole first?
Luna 25
Luna 25 was Russia's first Moon shot since 1976, and it hit the surface after a braking engine ran for 127 seconds instead of the planned 84.
Q 06Chandrayaan-1 deliberately crashed a probe onto the Moon in November 2008 on the birthday of which Indian leader?
Jawaharlal Nehru
Jawaharlal Nehru's birthday is also India's Children's Day, and ISRO named the impact site Jawahar Sthal in his memory.
Q 07Chandrayaan-3's rover zapped the soil with its LIBS spectroscope to confirm which element near the south pole?
Sulfur
Sulfur was something instruments on orbiters could not pin down, so the rover's laser settled it on the ground and left scientists asking whether volcanoes or meteorites had put it there.
Q 08Chandrayaan-2's lander debris was spotted in NASA images by Shanmuga Subramanian, a volunteer working in which Indian city?
Chennai
Chennai software engineer Shanmuga Subramanian compared NASA orbiter photos pixel by pixel and found the wreckage before NASA's own team confirmed it.
Q 09Before Chandrayaan-3, which country had made every successful soft landing on the Moon this century, starting in 2013?
China
China landed Chang'e 3, 4 and 5 between 2013 and 2020, while Israel's Beresheet and India's own Chandrayaan-2 lander both crashed trying in 2019.
Q 10The programme's name Chandrayaan joins the Sanskrit word for the Moon to the word for what?
Vehicle
Vehicle is what yaan means, so the name reads as 'Moon craft', and the same ending gives India's Mars orbiter Mangalyaan and its crew capsule Gaganyaan.
Q 11Which ISRO rocket, India's heaviest with two giant solid boosters, launched Chandrayaan-2 and Chandrayaan-3?
LVM3
LVM3 flew as GSLV Mk III until 2022 and weighs 640 tonnes at liftoff, and the same rocket has been chosen to carry India's first astronauts.
Q 12Chandrayaan-1 rode which ISRO workhorse rocket, in its stretched XL variant, into orbit in October 2008?
PSLV
PSLV's XL version, with longer strap-on boosters, made its debut on this launch, and the same stretched rocket sent India's first Mars probe on its way five years later.
Q 13ISRO's failure review traced the 2019 crash of Chandrayaan-2's lander mainly to which kind of fault?
A software glitch
A software glitch capped how fast the lander could turn after its engines pushed slightly too hard, so Chandrayaan-3 was given more fuel and a much larger landing zone.
Q 21After dropping off its lander, Chandrayaan-3's propulsion module was steered in late 2023 into orbit around which body?
Earth
Earth orbit was a bonus trip: with the mission's goals already met, ISRO flew the module home to rehearse the return leg that a future round-trip mission will need.
Q 22Chandrayaan-3's solar-powered rover weighed roughly how much?
26 kg
26 kg of rover ran on just 50 watts of solar power, about the draw of a laptop charger, and rolled down a ramp from the lander hours after touchdown.
Q 23Chandrayaan-3's six-wheeled rover was designed to creep across the lunar surface at what speed?
1 cm per second
1 cm per second was all it needed, because every drive waited on ISRO engineers, who mapped the terrain ahead from its camera images before sending the next command.
Q 14Which foreign partner was first meant to build Chandrayaan-2's lander, before pulling out of the deal?
Roscosmos
Roscosmos could not deliver the lander even by a revised 2015 date, so ISRO built its own, a decision that pushed the launch to 2019.
Q 15Chandrayaan-3's landing site was given which name, formally recognised by the International Astronomical Union in 2024?
Statio Shiv Shakti
Statio Shiv Shakti pairs the god Shiva with Shakti, divine feminine energy, and the prime minister said the second half also honoured the mission's women scientists.
Q 16Since 2024, India has marked 23 August, the anniversary of Chandrayaan-3's touchdown, as which annual observance?
National Space Day
National Space Day was announced to ISRO's scientists in person three days after the landing, in the same address that named the touchdown site and the 2019 crash site.
Q 17Which ISRO chairman declared 'India is on the Moon' the moment Chandrayaan-3's lander touched down?
S. Somanath
S. Somanath had been project director of the very rocket that launched the mission, and he handed the chairmanship to V. Narayanan in January 2025.
Q 18Which ISRO chairman, the son of a mango farmer, led the agency through Chandrayaan-2's launch and lost landing in 2019?
K. Sivan
K. Sivan was filmed in tears after the lander fell silent, and the prime minister's hug for him became one of the mission's defining images.
Q 19Which engineer, later dubbed the 'Moon Man of India', was project director of Chandrayaan-1 from 2004 to 2008?
Mylswamy Annadurai
Mylswamy Annadurai was taught entirely in Tamil at village schools near Pollachi, and he went on to run the programme behind India's Mars orbiter as well.
Q 20Why did ISRO double Chandrayaan-1's orbit height to 200 km in May 2009?
It was overheating
It was overheating at 100 km, where temperatures ran above the 75°C its designers had planned for, though ISRO first said the higher orbit was for gravity studies.
Q 24Chandrayaan-3's rover covered roughly how much ground before going to sleep?
About 100 m
About 100 m was all it covered against the 500 m it was built for, and early on it was ordered to retrace its path when a four-metre crater appeared three metres ahead.
Q 25Chandrayaan-3's lander and rover were built to last one stretch of lunar daylight, which lasts roughly how many days?
14
14 days of sunlight powered the solar panels, and after the long freezing night that followed, neither craft answered ISRO's wake-up calls.
Q 26Chandrayaan-3's lander carried ILSA, which logged more than 250 signals in under two weeks; what kind of instrument is it?
A seismometer
A seismometer, ILSA felt the rover rolling past, and about 50 of its signals matched nothing the mission was doing, leaving scientists to weigh moonquakes against micrometeorite hits.
Q 27Days after landing, Chandrayaan-3's lander refired its engines for a short 'hop', lifting itself about how high?
40 cm
40 cm was enough to prove the lander could fire up and lift off again, and ISRO called it a kick-start for future missions that must launch themselves back off the Moon.
Q 28Chandrayaan-2's orbiter was built for one year at the Moon but was given about seven; what made the difference?
Leftover fuel
Leftover fuel did it, because an accurate launch and lean manoeuvres burned less than budgeted, so the orbiter was still circling in 2023 to greet Chandrayaan-3's lander with 'Welcome, buddy!'
Q 29Chandrayaan-4, approved by India's cabinet in 2024, is designed as India's first mission to do what?
Bring back lunar samples
Bring back lunar samples is the goal, with a craft too heavy for one Indian rocket, so it will launch in two halves that dock in orbit before heading for the Moon.
Q 30Chandrayaan-3's lander pushed a ten-sensor probe 10 cm into the lunar soil to profile what?
Temperature
Temperature fell from a surface hotter than ISRO's team had expected to about −10°C just 8 cm down, so a finger's length of soil separates a scorching day from a hard frost.