The U.S. space agency NASA is rejecting conspiracy claims by Kim Kardashian that the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landings did not happen.
In the most recent episode of her family’s hit reality show, The Kardashians, Kardashian says she thinks the pivotal lunar expedition was a hoax, citing a series of articles that, she claims, explain why some aspects of the footage and photographs taken on the moon are unreliable.
Shortly after the episode aired, NASA acting administrator Sean Duffy rebuked Kardashian, writing to her in a post on X, “Yes, we’ve been to the Moon before… 6 times!”
Kardashian responded to his post, saying, “Wait…. what’s the tea on 3I Atlas?!?!!!!!!!?????,” an interstellar comet, which, according to astronomers, is the third-ever object from outside our solar system to pass through our “celestial neighbourhood.”
Duffy replied with an invitation to the launch of NASA’s Artemis mission to the moon at Kennedy Space Center.
“We love your excitement about our Artemis mission to the Moon. You’re officially invited to launch at Kennedy Space Center!” he wrote.
Conspiracy theories that the moon landings did not take place have existed for decades, despite being consistently debunked.
In the episode, Kardashian can be seen showing actor Sarah Paulson — with whom she is co-starring in the upcoming Ryan Murphy legal drama “All’s Fair” — a quote from an interview with Buzz Aldrin, who, along with Neil Armstrong, took the first steps on the moon.
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“There was no scary moment because it didn’t happen. It could’ve been scary, but it wasn’t because it didn’t happen,” she reads, “he says it all the time in interviews,” she added, “maybe we should find Buzz Aldrin.”
Kardashian was referring to a comment Aldrin made during a 2015 talk at the Oxford University Students’ Union, when he responded to a student’s question about the Apollo 11 mission.
“What was the scariest moment of the journey?” the student asked.
“Scariest? It didn’t happen,” Aldrin answered, smiling. “It could’ve been scary. Circuit breaker,” he says, before the moderator asks: “The circuit breaker on the [indecipherable]?”
“I’m glad somebody helps me,” Aldrin said, before continuing. “We came back inside after kicking up dust and picking up some rocks and of course, we had to send them up the ladder because that would be hazardous, carrying a big rock box up the ladder.”
He said the crew and team had thought of that plan ahead of time, and that Aldrin got into the cabin first so that his colleagues could hand the rock box up to him.
“Then we were supposed to tidy up and tidy up means get rid of stuff you don’t need so we won’t be as heavy to lift off,” he said, describing the process of pressurizing and depressurizing the cabin and hooking up to the spacecraft system, and how crews back on the ground said they could hear the crew through the seismographer that recorded the vibrations of sounds “bouncing around on the moon.”
He then described how the crew settled back into the cabin, and noticed something in the dust of the rocks they had been collecting.
“There was something that didn’t look like it belonged there. It was a circuit breaker — a broken circuit breaker, the end of it,” he said.
“Engine arm,” Aldrin added the label on the breaker said, which was for the system used for the landing engine. “That’s the one that gets us back in orbit and gets us home.”
He then said he “used a pen to push it in,” and then called it a “piece of cake.”
Later, during a scene back in her trailer, Kardashian tells a crew member behind the camera, “I centre conspiracies all the time,” before elaborating on her disbelief, saying that no stars are visible in any of the photographic evidence captured from the landing — a popular argument from skeptics, according to the Institute of Physics.
There is a simple explanation for the lack of stars, the institute says: the photos were taken during the day.
“This meant starlight lost the battle against the very bright surface of the Moon, too dim to show up in photos,” its website says.
According to the institute, every conspiracy theory claiming that the moon landings were fake has been disproven.
Often, the expert organization argues, those who claim the landings were staged say the U.S. government faked Apollo 11 and later missions to deal a crucial blow to the USSR in the Space Race, boost NASA funding or divert attention away from the Vietnam War.
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