Space
Five real newspaper headlines about space, printed between 1926 and 2019, with their dates removed. Read each one and guess the year it was published. No multiple choice and no trivia questions, just the headline as it was printed.
There are 5 rounds of five in this topic, and a new one appears whenever the archive has enough for it.
Headline one
Boston Globe
1926
On 16 March 1926, American physicist Robert Goddard launched the world's first liquid-fuelled rocket from a field in Auburn, Massachusetts. The rocket, burning gasoline and liquid oxygen, flew for 2.5 seconds, reaching an altitude of 12.5 metres and travelling 56 metres. Goddard's pioneering work laid the foundations for modern rocketry and inspired the engineers who later built the rockets that reached space.
Headline two
The Washington Post
1970
An oxygen tank explosion on 13 April 1970 crippled NASA's Apollo 13 spacecraft en route to the Moon, forcing mission commander James Lovell and his crew to abandon the lunar module as a lifeboat. NASA ground controllers and the astronauts improvised ingenious solutions to return the crew safely to Earth on 17 April. The episode was later called NASA's finest hour.
Headline three
Los Angeles Times
1990
On April 24, 1990, NASA's Space Shuttle Discovery carried the Hubble Space Telescope into low Earth orbit, opening a revolutionary new era of astronomy. Hubble was designed to capture images free from atmospheric distortion, allowing scientists to observe distant galaxies, nebulae, and other celestial phenomena with unprecedented clarity. Although an early mirror flaw temporarily hampered its performance, a 1993 servicing mission corrected the optics and Hubble went on to transform humanity's understanding of the cosmos.
Headline four
The Independent
2006
In August 2006, the International Astronomical Union voted to formally reclassify Pluto as a 'dwarf planet', stripping it of the full planetary status it had held since its discovery in 1930. The decision was controversial and sparked public debate around the world, with many people expressing surprise and even outrage at the demotion. The move reduced the official number of planets in our solar system from nine to eight.
Headline five
The Guardian
2019
The Event Horizon Telescope collaboration released the first ever direct image of a black hole on April 10, 2019, showing the supermassive black hole at the centre of galaxy M87, 55 million light years from Earth. The image, showing a bright ring of superheated matter surrounding a dark central region, confirmed key predictions of Einstein's general theory of relativity. Computer scientist Katie Bouman became widely celebrated for developing the algorithm that helped produce the image.
Answer the five above to see your score.
Scoring works as it does in the daily game. Each headline is worth up to 100 points, and you lose two points for every year you are out. Being a decade wrong still earns you 80. A perfect round is 500.
More science & tech: Technology · The internet · Computing · Medicine · Science · all challenges