Was the Moon landing faked? What the hoax claims get wrong
Polls found up to 28% of people in some countries doubted the landings. Here is why scientists call the claims demonstrably false.
▶ Start the storyNo. The evidence says the six Apollo landings between 1969 and 1972 really happened. theories claim that the landings were hoaxes staged by NASA, but such views are considered fringe, and experts in science and astronomy regard the claims as and demonstrably false. Still, it is worth knowing why the claims persist, and why each one fails.
The idea took off in 1976, when former navy officer Bill Kaysing self-published a book arguing the landings were faked. Surveys between 1994 and 2009 found that 6% to 20% of Americans, 25% of Britons and 28% of Russians believed the landings had been faked, so the story is not rare.
The claims tend to fall apart on close inspection. Take the photos with no stars. The landings happened in lunar daytime, so the Sun and the sunlit ground outshone the stars, and the cameras were set for daylight . Or the waving flag: it only seemed to flutter while the astronauts were moving it, and without air drag its free corner swung like a pendulum.
Then there is the sheer scale. According to James Longuski, a hoax would have involved more than 400,000 Apollo workers, plus the astronauts, all keeping the secret. And the Soviet Union, which tracked the missions too, would have cried foul, according to debunker Phil Plait.
400,000+
Independent evidence exists as well: orbiter photos of the landing sites, rocks that scientists worldwide agree came from the Moon, and a laser-reflecting mirror that an observatory detected the same day it was deployed.
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Recap
Each hoax claim has a simple explanation, and the evidence comes from people who did not work for NASA.
💡 A trick to remember it · Ask three things of any wild claim: what is the simpler explanation, who else could check it, and how many would have to keep quiet?
Surprising fact · Groups outside NASA, including the Soviet Union, tracked the Apollo flights as they happened.
Sources (1)
No source, no claim. Every fact in this lesson (14 claims) cites at least one of these.