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60 free Neil Armstrong trivia questions with answers — science & nature quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Neil Armstrong trivia quiz covers the reluctant hero who took humanity's first step on another world. The easy questions cover the basics: the mission he commanded, the two men who flew with him, the date of the landing, the ship that picked them up and the words he spoke at the bottom of the ladder. From there it moves through his Ohio boyhood, the pilot's licence he earned before his driver's licence, Purdue and the Navy, the wing torn off over Korea, the years as a test pilot at Edwards, the seven X-15 flights and the late application that a friend slipped into the pile. The harder end covers Gemini 8 and the stuck thruster, the ejection from the Flying Bedstead half a second from death, why he and not Aldrin went out first, the 1202 alarms, the seconds of fuel left at touchdown, the pen that started the ascent engine, the missing indefinite article, the Chrysler adverts, the Rogers Commission, the barber who sold his hair, the fingertip he had reattached, the North Pole trip with Edmund Hillary and the ashes scattered at sea. Every answer was checked against Armstrong's encyclopaedia entry before publishing and the supporting sentence is stored with each question. Our Apollo 13, NASA and Space Exploration quizzes are natural companions.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which two crewmates flew to the Moon with Armstrong on his second and last spaceflight?
Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins
Aldrin landed with him; Collins stayed in lunar orbit in the command module Columbia.
Q 02Near which Ohio town was Armstrong born and raised?
Wapakoneta
His father was a state auditor and the family lived in 16 towns in 14 years before settling back there in 1944.
Q 03How old was Armstrong when his father first took him to the Cleveland Air Races?
Two
He had his first flight in a Ford Trimotor, the 'Tin Goose', at five or six.
Q 04What did Armstrong earn on his 16th birthday, before he had a driver's licence?
A student flight certificate
He soloed that August; he was also an Eagle Scout and carried a World Scout Badge to the Moon.
Q 05At which university did Armstrong study aeronautical engineering from 1947?
Purdue
He turned down MIT after watching Purdue beat Ohio State in 1945; the Navy paid his tuition under the Holloway Plan.
Q 06Which aircraft did Armstrong fly in combat over Korea from the carrier USS Essex?
Grumman F9F Panther
He flew 78 missions and once had six feet of wing torn off by a cable strung as a booby trap.
Q 07How many combat missions did Armstrong fly in the Korean War?
78
They totalled 121 hours in the air; he received the Air Medal and two gold stars.
Q 08What happened after Armstrong nursed his damaged Panther over friendly territory in September 1951?
He ejected and was picked up by a flight-school roommate in a jeep
He meant to eject over water but the wind blew his parachute back over land.
Q 09Which two student musicals did Armstrong write and co-direct as an undergraduate?
A version of Snow White and The Land of Egelloc
'Egelloc' is 'college' spelled backwards; he also played baritone in the marching band.
Q 10Whom did Armstrong marry in January 1956?
Janet Shearon
They divorced in 1994 after 38 years; their daughter Karen died of a brain tumour aged two in 1962.
Q 11At which air force base did Armstrong become a NACA test pilot in 1955?
Edwards
He flew more than 200 different aircraft models in his career.
Q 12How many times did Armstrong fly the North American X-15 rocket plane?
Seven
He reached Mach 5.74 and over 207,000 feet, and once overshot the landing field by 40 miles at Mach 3.
Q 13What was Armstrong's top speed in the X-15?
Mach 5.74
That is 3,989 mph; he left the Flight Research Center with 2,400 flying hours.
Q 14With which legendary pilot did Armstrong get a T-33 stuck in a wet Nevada lake bed in April 1962?
Q 21What was Armstrong's salary after the pay rise that followed his first spaceflight?
$21,653 a year
The $678 raise made him NASA's highest-paid astronaut.
Q 22In which South American country did Armstrong greet dignitaries in Guarani during a 1966 goodwill tour?
Paraguay
In Brazil he spoke about the aviation pioneer Santos-Dumont; the tour covered 11 countries in 24 days.
Q 23Where was Armstrong on the day of the Apollo 1 fire, 27 January 1967?
In Washington for the signing of the Outer Space Treaty
Chuck Yeager
Yeager, laughing, said he had known the lake was unsuitable; Armstrong remembered it differently.
Q 15Why was Armstrong ineligible for the original Mercury astronaut selection?
He was a civilian test pilot
Selection was limited to military test pilots; Gemini in 1962 opened it to civilians.
Q 16How did Armstrong's late application to the second astronaut group get considered in 1962?
A friend slipped it into the pile before anyone noticed
Dick Day, a flight simulator expert he knew from test-pilot days, saw it arrive a week past the June 1 deadline.
Q 17What did the press call the second group of NASA astronauts, selected in 1962?
The New Nine
Armstrong and Elliot See were the two civilians among them.
Q 18Which mission was Armstrong's first spaceflight?
Gemini 8
He became NASA's first civilian astronaut in space, flying with David Scott in March 1966.
Q 19What milestone did Armstrong's March 1966 flight achieve before its emergency?
The first docking of two spacecraft
A stuck thruster then sent the docked craft rolling once per second; using re-entry fuel to stop it forced an early return.
Q 20How did flight director Gene Kranz sum up the 1966 stuck-thruster emergency?
'They reacted wrong because we trained them wrong'
No procedure existed for the docked spacecraft; Kranz called it the mission's most important lesson.
He and fellow astronauts spent the night drinking scotch and discussing what had happened.
Q 24What was the nickname of the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle from which Armstrong ejected in May 1968?
The Flying Bedstead
Half a second later and his parachute would not have opened; his only injury was a bitten tongue.
Q 25Whom did Armstrong decline to swap in for Buzz Aldrin when Deke Slayton offered him command of the landing?
Jim Lovell
He thought Lovell, who had commanded Gemini 12, deserved his own command rather than the number-three seat.
Q 26What official reason was given in April 1969 for Armstrong, not Aldrin, going out first?
The LM hatch opened inwards and to the right
Chris Kraft later wrote that managers had already chosen Armstrong partly because he lacked a large ego.
Q 27On what date did Armstrong's Saturn V lift off from Kennedy Space Center?
16 July 1969
Armstrong's heart rate peaked at 110; his wife and sons watched from a yacht on the Banana River.
Q 28What did the 1202 and 1201 alarms during the lunar descent turn out to mean?
Executive overflows in the guidance computer
Aldrin later said leaving the docking radar on had overloaded the computer; CAPCOM Charlie Duke said to carry on.
Q 29Per post-mission analysis, how much propellant burn time was left when the Eagle touched down?
45 to 50 seconds
The crew believed they had 40 seconds; Armstrong had taken manual control to avoid a boulder field.
Q 30What did Armstrong radio to confirm the landing?
'Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.'
Charlie Duke replied: 'You got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We're breathing again.'