The Station, Rockets and Beyond: teacher key

Astronauts and Space Travel, grade 7 edition, written for 7th grade. Astronauts float in a home that orbits Earth. Read about rockets, spacesuits, training, the first flights and Artemis II.

Read the book. Print this page for the key.

Questions and answers

1. What does a jet engine need that a rocket engine carries with it?
   • Oxygen from the air (answer)
   • Hot water
   • A spinning machine
2. Why do big rockets have stages?
   • To drop used-up sections and stay light (answer)
   • To carry more passengers
   • To keep their engines cool
3. What does a centrifuge do for astronaut trainees?
   • It cleans their water
   • It presses on them like the g-forces of launch (answer)
   • It lets them float in a pool
4. Which flight went all the way around Earth?
   • Alan Shepard's
   • Neither
   • Yuri Gagarin's (answer)
5. Gagarin's flight lasted 108 minutes and Shepard's lasted 15. How many minutes longer was Gagarin's?
   • 93 minutes (answer)
   • 123 minutes
   • 15 minutes
6. What does exhaust mean in the rocket pushes its exhaust out?
   • Fuel in a tank
   • Hot gas that leaves the engine (answer)
   • A very loud noise

Words

• centrifuge: spinning machine
• buoyant: able to float
• stages: rocket sections
• exhaust: hot gas out
• orbits: circles around