Atmosphere Quiz: How Well Do You Know Joan and Vanessa's Story?

Think you've absorbed every detail of Taylor Jenkins Reid's Atmosphere? This 20-question quiz spans the entire novel, from Joan Goodwin's earliest NASA aspirations to Vanessa Ford's harrowing ordeal aboard the crippled shuttle Navigator. Questions cover plot and sequence, character motivations, themes and symbols, and synthesis across storylines. Formats alternate between multiple-choice and short-answer. An answer key with brief explanations follows all questions.

Before You Begin

Plot and Sequence (Questions 1–8)

1. In what year does the main narrative of Atmosphere open?

A) 1980
B) 1981
C) 1984
D) 1985

2. What causes the debris that fatally strikes the Navigator crew?

A) A micrometeoroid impact
B) A fuel tank explosion
C) Explosive-cord debris from a payload bay door
D) A failed heat shield tile

3. Short answer: What two items does Lydia Danes use to seal the cabin leak before losing consciousness?

4. Where does Joan Goodwin first recognize her attraction to women?

A) At a NASA training campfire
B) At her sister Barbara's wedding
C) During a solo stargazing trip
D) In a New Orleans strip club

5. Short answer: What shuttle mission does Joan serve as CAPCOM for?

6. Why is Vanessa Ford barred from piloting the space shuttle?

A) She failed the required physical examination
B) She lacks military pilot credentials
C) She has not logged enough flight hours
D) NASA does not permit any women to pilot the shuttle

7. Short answer: What does Joan promise Frances when she picks her up from boarding school?

8. What ultimately happens to Commander Steve Hagen and mission specialist Hank Redmond?

A) They eject safely before the debris strike
B) They survive but are permanently grounded
C) They die from the debris strike; Vanessa stows their bodies in the airlock
D) They are rescued by a second shuttle crew

Character Motivation (Questions 9–13)

9. Short answer: Joan applies to the NASA astronaut corps twice before being accepted. What personal quality drives her to reapply after the first rejection?

10. Why did a teenage Vanessa repeatedly seek out dangerous situations?

A) To impress her peer group
B) To feel something other than sadness after her father's death
C) To rebel against her mother's strict religious rules
D) To prove she had the nerve to become an astronaut

11. Short answer: What specific event forces Joan to take custody of her niece Frances?

12. While attempting the payload bay door repair, what primarily drives Vanessa to keep working despite the lethal risk?

A) A direct order from Flight Director Jack Katowski
B) A promise she made to Steve Hagen before launch
C) Her love for Joan and a flood of survival instinct
D) Her competitive determination to prove she can pilot the shuttle

13. Short answer: In her own words to Vanessa, what about astronomy first made Joan fall in love with it as a child?

Theme and Symbol (Questions 14–17)

14. What do the stars most consistently symbolize throughout Atmosphere?

A) Danger and the terrifying unknown
B) Permanence, connection, and comfort
C) Human ambition and technological progress
D) The cold indifference of the universe

15. Short answer: During a stargazing trip, Joan tells Vanessa, "We are the stars." What does she mean by this?

16. The "unmarked door" metaphor in Chapter 12 represents what turning point for Joan?

A) The entrance to Mission Control, where she will serve as CAPCOM
B) The opportunity to join NASA's astronaut corps
C) Her awakening to her sexuality and love for Vanessa
D) The path to becoming a mission specialist instead of a professor

17. Short answer: In the Author's Note, Taylor Jenkins Reid explains that the Summer Triangle always points south. What emotional or philosophical meaning does she attach to this fact?

Synthesis (Questions 18–20)

18. Short answer: How does Joan's decision to raise Frances parallel the commitment she and Vanessa make to each other?

19. How do Barbara Goodwin and NASA's institutional rules serve similar narrative functions?

A) Both eventually change their positions and fully support Joan
B) Both represent external barriers that prevent authentic selfhood and love
C) Both are based on outdated science or technology
D) Both are easily overcome by the protagonists once they speak up

20. Short answer: The novel repeatedly contrasts human smallness against cosmic immensity. What comfort does the narrative suggest we can draw from this contrast?

Answer Key

1. C) 1984
The story opens on December 29, 1984, with Joan Goodwin arriving at Johnson Space Center to serve as CAPCOM for the STS-LR9 mission aboard the shuttle Navigator.

2. C) Explosive-cord debris from a payload bay door
Chapter 11 specifies that a warped right payload bay door, damaged by explosive-cord debris, is the source of the debris strike that kills or injures most of the crew.

3. A clipboard and duct tape
Chapter 6 explicitly states that Lydia Danes "found the leak and sealed it with a clipboard and duct tape" before passing out from decompression sickness (the bends).

4. D) In a New Orleans strip club
In Chapter 9, Joan visits a Bourbon Street strip club with fellow ASCANs, watches a dancer named Raven, and experiences a "sudden, clarifying recognition of her attraction to women."

5. STS-LR9
Joan serves as CAPCOM—the ground-based communicator with the shuttle crew—for the STS-LR9 mission, the third flight of the shuttle Navigator.

6. B) She lacks military pilot credentials
Chapter 7 records Vanessa explaining that women could not join the military as pilots when she would have been eligible, and NASA will only accept military pilots to fly the shuttle. She calls this a "nice little work-around" for excluding women.

7. Unconditional, lifelong love and a permanent home with Joan
In Chapter 20, Joan tells Frances she will live with her permanently, re-enroll her in public school, and promises she will "never be alone again."

8. C) They die from the debris strike; Vanessa stows their bodies in the airlock
Chapter 6 details Vanessa moving Steve's and Hank's bodies into the airlock and closing the inner hatch before preparing for a contingency deorbit.

9. Perseverance (or quiet persistence)
Chapter 4 emphasizes Joan's determination: after being overlooked in the first round of female candidates, she applies again a year later. Vanessa later calls this quality Joan's defining drive.

10. B) To feel something other than sadness after her father's death
In Chapter 7, Vanessa tells Joan, "If you find a way to make yourself absolutely terrified, there's no room for any other feeling," and explains that flying ultimately brought her peace instead of fear.

11. Barbara announces she and Daniel are moving to London and will leave Frances at boarding school indefinitely
Chapter 20 shows Barbara revealing this plan. Joan confronts her, obtains written authority over Frances, and immediately removes her from the school.

12. C) Her love for Joan and a flood of survival instinct
Chapter 21 describes Vanessa as "flooded with the will to live" and praying silently to see Joan's face again. Her love for Joan, together with raw survival drive, pushes her through the repair.

13. That the night sky is a map, and once you learn to read it, it will always be there—you'll never be lost
Chapter 7 preserves this exact explanation. Joan adds that this constancy reminds her she is never alone.

14. B) Permanence, connection, and comfort
From the Author's Note ("Nothing you or I could do will ever alter them") through Joan's stargazing lessons and the novel's final reflections, stars represent an unchanging, reassuring presence that connects all matter and all people.

15. Every atom in human bodies was once part of the stars; all matter in the universe shares the same elemental origins, creating a profound kinship
Chapter 7 records Joan explaining that to look at the night sky is to look at "parts of who you once were, who you may one day be."

16. C) Her awakening to her sexuality and love for Vanessa
In Chapter 12, after Vanessa kisses her, Joan realizes she has been "walking past an unmarked door" to the life she truly wants—one of romantic love with another woman.

17. That the stars' immovability guarantees "everything will be some type of okay," no matter what human losses or changes occur
Reid writes in her Author's Note that the constancy of the Summer Triangle assures her that amid all life's upheavals, something solid endures.

18. Both involve chosen family, sacrifice, and unconditional love that operates outside society's sanctioned structures
Joan's commitment to Frances mirrors her private covenant with Vanessa: both bonds are formed by choice rather than biology or legal recognition, both require Joan to defy external judgment (Barbara's scorn, NASA's homophobia), and both are framed as lifelong promises.

19. B) Both represent external barriers that prevent authentic selfhood and love
Barbara refuses to accept Joan's identity and cruelly dismisses her capacity for adult love (Chapter 19). NASA's military-pilot rule excludes Vanessa from the cockpit (Chapter 7), and its institutional climate forces Joan and Vanessa to hide their relationship. Neither barrier is overcome by persuasion; Joan ultimately accepts that Barbara will never change, while she and Vanessa carve out a private life within the constraints.

20. The narrative suggests that because the stars are immovable and indifferent to human affairs, their permanence offers reassurance that our struggles are finite, and a larger order persists beyond individual loss
Reid's Author's Note and Joan's reflections throughout the novel (especially in Chapters 2, 7, and 19) frame cosmic immensity not as frightening meaninglessness but as a steady backdrop against which human love, wonder, and connection gain their significance.