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Born this day in 1620, Jean Picard was a French astronomer who conducted an arc measurement survey in 1669 by measuring one degree of latitude along the Paris Meridian using triangulation along 13 triangles stretching from Paris to the clocktower of Sourdon. He became the first person to accurately measure what we now know is 51,00,72,000 km2. What did he measure?

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At 02:56 Coordinated Universal Time in 1969, Mare Tranquillitatis (The Sea of Tranquillity) became an important part of human history. It is made up of mostly basalt and has a slight bluish tint due to higher metal content and was chosen because it is relatively level. What happened at this place 46 years ago?

Answer : Neil Armstrong stepped out on the moon

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3 / 10 |
On July 21, 2011, NASA’s 32-year-long Space Shuttle program ended with the landing of Space Shuttle OV-104 on mission STS-135 at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. The 135th and final Space Shuttle mission was to deliver a payload to the International Space Station (ISS). The shuttle was named after a research ship, which itself was named after a mythical lost continent. What was the name of the shuttle?

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This planet takes 165 Earth years to complete one full orbit around the sun and was discovered by a bunch of astronomers on the night of September 23-24 in 1846, based on mathematical calculations. Which planet is this?

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Soviet cosmologist Igor Novikov put forward the existence of a hypothetical object as part of a solution to one of Einstein field equations. It is a region of spacetime and singularity that cannot be entered from the outside, although energy-matter, light and information can escape from it. A reference to a more famous object that does the exact opposite, by what name are these known?

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Assembling of the ISS involved a lot of mechanical work, such as welding, which would be easy on Earth, but close to impossible in space. In the vacuum of space, it’s difficult to control shielding gases or generate heat using traditional welding methods. In reality, if two surfaces of the same metal are brought close to each other and pressed, there is an exchange of electrons and they get fused. What is the name of this method?

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The region of space in which a mass’ magnetic field dominates is known as its magnetosphere. Earth’s field stretches 64,000 kilometres. The largest and strongest field belongs to a planet whose sphere is so big it could engulf the sun. If it was visible it would actually be larger than the moon in our sky. Which planet is this?

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Lucy is a star in the constellation of Centaurus. which was first thought to be a dim white dwarf but it subsequently turned out to be incredibly dense, with the mass of the Sun crammed into an object only a third the diameter of Earth. Astronomers were able to study the vibrations of the star and discovered the reason for its extremely dense core, hence naming it ‘Lucy’. What had the star’s carbon core crystallised into?

Answer : Diamond (Lucy in the sky with diamonds)

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9 / 10 |
The time taken for this planet to revolve around the sun (on year on Earth) is only about 88 Earth days long. However, it has a very slow rotation around its own axis, hence each ‘day’ on this planet is 176 Earth days long. Which planet is this, where a day is twice as long as an year?

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In 2009, astronomers were able to do a chemical analysis of the centre of the Milky Way and they discovered that there was a huge cloud of ethyl formate which slowly dispersed across the galaxy. This leads us to understand the prevalent smell and flavour of our solar system. What alliterative combination of a berry and a drink did astronomers use to describe the taste of the Milky Way?