Achieved Academy Trivia 1

What specific items is the Perseverance rover carrying to test their durability on Mars for future human missions?

• Samples of potential food sources

• Different types of communication antennas

• Swatches of spacesuit materials

• Miniaturized water purification systems

According to a NASA-led analysis, what was identified as the primary cause for the higher-than-expected sea level rise in 2024?

• Increased melting of Arctic sea ice

• A large increase in rainfall over the oceans

• Unusual ocean warming leading to thermal expansion

• Major underwater volcanic eruptions

As of today, April 11, 2025, about how long has the Mars Science Laboratory mission's Curiosity rover been on Mars?

• 6.4 years

• 8.5 years

• 10.2 years

• 12.7 years

A recent NASA-funded study provided evidence that gullies on asteroid Vesta may have been created by which of the following geologic processes?

• Wind erosion

• Earthquakes

• Volcanic eruptions

• Sudden, brief flows of water

When it’s winter on Earth, which season is commencing on Mars?

• Winter also

• Spring

• Summer

• Fall

Set to launch on Oct. 10, Europa Clipper carries a microchip featuring waveforms of people saying what word in over 100 spoken languages?

• "Water"

• "Ocean"

• "Hello"

• "Moon"

Scientists recently got a big surprise when NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope revealed that the long-studied star WL 20, located in the Scorpius and Ophiuchus constellations, was actually:

• Twins (two stars)

• A supernova

• A planet

• A black hole

NASA’s first interplanetary CubeSats – a pair of briefcase-size spacecraft called Mars Cube One, or MarCO, which flew by Mars in 2018 – were named after which two Pixar characters?

• Sully and Mike

• WALL-E and EVE

NASA’s Deep Space Optical Communications experiment recently beamed an ultra-high definition streaming video on Dec. 11 from a record-setting 19 million miles away. The star of the video was:

• A jar of lucky JPL peanuts

• A chihuahua named Mr. Dee Sock

• A dancing JPL deer

• A cat named Taters

The Europa Clipper spacecraft is set to launch in October 2024. Approximately how far is Europa from Earth?

• 111 million miles

• 222 million miles

• 333 million miles

• 444 million miles