On September 14, 60 years ago, the Soviet probe Luna 2 crashed on the moon. It was the first man-made object to reach the Earth’s natural satellite. This week’s quiz is all about the moon.
Lunar obsession
3 Which company had declared a $30-million award in 2007 for the first privately funded team to land a robotic spacecraft on the moon, travel half a kilometre and send back high-definition pictures? Team Indus from India was one of the five finalists, but no one was successful till the end of the deadline on March 31, 2018?
4 The British actor David Niven wrote a bestselling memoir called The Moon’s a Balloon . Name the poem — and the poet — from which the title was borrowed.
5 Which metalloid, with the atomic number 34 and properties between sulphur and tellurium, is named after the moon?
6 The National Award for Best Film in 1992 went to Electric Moon , a parody about a tourist lodge run in central India by former royalty. Name the scriptwriter.
7 Apollo XI was the first space flight that landed humans on the moon in July 1969. The lunar module was named Eagle . What was the name of the command module piloted by Michael Collins that remained in orbit while Eagle landed on the lunar surface?
8 In 2010, who became the first Indian film star to have a crater in the moon named after him, joining the likes of Homi Bhabha, CV Raman and Vikram Sarabhai. He does have a connection, thanks to a 2004 film.
9 With respect to the moon, what are the Big Splash, capture, fission and accretion?
10The Moonstone is regarded as the first modern mystery novel and took its name from a large Indian diamond associated with Chandra, the moon god. Who wrote Moonstone ?
Answers
1 Pragyan, Sanskrit for ‘wisdom’
2The Dark Side of the Moon by Pink Floyd
3 Google. It was the Google Lunar XPRIZE
4 Who knows if the moon’s a balloon, coming out of a keen city in the sky by ee cummings
5 Selenium, discovered by Jöns Jacob Berzelius in 1817
6 Arundhati Roy
7Columbia
8 Shah Rukh Khan; in the film Swades , he was shown as working for NASA
9 These are the various theories on how the moon was formed. The most accepted is The Big Splash, which postulates that a Mars-size object collided with Earth, with the moon breaking off as a result
10 Wilkie Collins
Joy Bhattacharjya is a quizmaster; Twitter: @joybhattacharj