Space – True/False – GK Questions

A lunar eclipse occurs when the Earth passes between the Sun and the Moon, casting a shadow on the Moon. This alignment can only happen during a full moon.

Mercury has a very thin exosphere rather than a true atmosphere. It is too small and hot to retain a significant atmosphere, leading to extreme temperature fluctuations.

Neil Armstrong served as the commander of the Apollo 11 mission, which landed the first humans on the Moon in 1969.

Betelgeuse is a red supergiant star in the constellation Orion. It is one of the largest stars visible to the naked eye and is expected to explode as a supernova in the future.

Geostationary satellites orbit at an altitude of approximately 35,786 km (often rounded to 36,000 km) above the Earth's equator.

Light travels at approximately 300,000 km/s in a vacuum, while sound travels at about 343 m/s in air. This is why we see lightning before we hear thunder.

Nebulae are vast clouds of gas and dust in space. Some nebulae come from the gas and dust thrown out by the explosion of a dying star, while others are regions where new stars are beginning to form.

Geostationary satellites orbit in the same direction as the Earth's rotation (west to east) to remain fixed relative to a point on the Earth's surface.

The Sun is not solid; it is a massive sphere of hot plasma (ionized gas). It generates energy through nuclear fusion in its core, converting hydrogen into helium.

Pluto is smaller than Earth's Moon. Pluto's diameter is about 2,377 km, while the Moon's diameter is about 3,475 km.

Kalpana Chawla, an Indian-American astronaut, was one of the seven crew members who died when the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated upon re-entry on February 1, 2003.

A meteoroid is a small rocky or metallic body in outer space. When it enters the atmosphere, it becomes a meteor (shooting star). If it survives and hits the ground, it is called a meteorite.

Polaris, the North Star, is the brightest star in the constellation Ursa Minor (the Little Dipper). It is closely aligned with the Earth's rotational axis, making it appear stationary in the sky.

A solar eclipse occurs when the Moon comes between the Sun and the Earth, casting a shadow on Earth. When Earth comes between the Sun and the Moon, it is a lunar eclipse.

Rakesh Sharma became the first Indian citizen to travel to space in 1984 aboard the Soviet Soyuz T-11 spacecraft. Kalpana Chawla was the first Indian-born woman in space, but she was a US citizen at the time.

Venus has a retrograde rotation, meaning it spins in the opposite direction to most other planets (east to west). This causes the Sun to rise in the west and set in the east on Venus.

While Saturn has the most prominent and visible rings, Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune also have ring systems, though they are fainter and less extensive.

A light year is a unit of distance, not time. It is the distance that light travels in a vacuum in one Julian year (approximately 9.46 trillion kilometers).

The event horizon is the boundary around a black hole beyond which nothing, including light, can escape the gravitational pull. This is a defining characteristic of black holes.

NASA is the United States government agency responsible for the civilian space program, as well as aeronautics and space research.