What is the moon landing hoax theory?
In July 1969, America’s Apollo 11 landed on the moon, and Commander Neil Armstrong and astronaut Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to set foot there. By 1972, the Apollo program had made six landings, with a total of twelve astronauts walking on the moon.
In the 1970s, however, a theory arose that “America never went to the moon, and the footage was filmed in a studio on Earth.” A book published in the United States in 1976 and the film Capricorn One (1978), about a faked Mars mission, drew attention, and the theory spread around the world through TV programs.
The main “evidence” and the answers
One commonly cited piece of evidence is that “the flag is waving on the airless moon.” But the flag hung from a horizontal rod through its top edge, and what looks like waving is the motion left over from shaking it while planting the pole; because there is no air, the swaying took a long time to stop.
Another claim is that “no stars appear in the photos.” This is because the photos were taken with short exposures suited to the brightly sunlit lunar surface and spacesuits, so the dim stars did not show up. Photograph the night sky from a brightly lit place on Earth and the stars will not show either. The claim that “shadows point in different directions, so there were multiple lights” is also explained by the bumps and terrain of the lunar surface changing how shadows appear.
Evidence that we went to the moon
The Apollo missions brought back a total of about 380 kg of moon rocks and soil, which have been studied by research institutions around the world. Laser experiments measuring the distance to the moon are still carried out today using reflectors the astronauts set up on the lunar surface. Since 2009, a NASA lunar orbiter has photographed the landing sites from orbit, revealing the remains of the landers and even the trails of the astronauts’ footprints.
Moreover, the Soviet Union, which was racing America in space at the time, never disputed the Apollo moon landings. Today the moon landings are considered established fact.
