Liftoff, Suits and Firsts: teacher key

Astronauts and Space Travel, grade 6 edition, written for 6th grade. Rockets lift astronauts to a home in orbit. Read how they float, eat, dress for spacewalks and go to the Moon.

Read the book. Print this page for the key.

Questions and answers

1. What does a rocket do with its fuel?
   • Turns it into hot gas and shoots it out the back (answer)
   • Saves it for the trip home
   • Cools the astronauts with it
2. How do spacesuits cool astronauts?
   • With fans
   • With water in tubes (answer)
   • With cold air
3. Why do astronauts float on the station?
   • Earth's gravity is switched off
   • The station is very light
   • They and the station are falling around Earth together (answer)
4. How many of the three Apollo 11 astronauts walked on the Moon?
   • Two (answer)
   • Three
   • One
5. Who flew in space earlier, Yuri Gagarin or Sally Ride?
   • Sally Ride
   • Yuri Gagarin (answer)
   • They flew together
6. What does exhaust mean in the rocket pushes its exhaust out?
   • Fuel in a tank
   • A very loud noise
   • Hot gas that leaves the engine (answer)

Words

• orbits: circles around
• exhaust: hot gas out
• weightless: floating, no weight
• spacewalks: trips outside
• microgravity: almost no weight