A thorough, evidence-based look at the Apollo program and the most persistent conspiracy claims
Originally published: December 2025
Estimated reading time: 18 minutes
The idea that NASA faked the Apollo moon landings first appeared in the mid-1970s. The earliest prominent proponent was Bill Kaysing (1922–2005), a former technical writer at Rocketdyne who published the self-printed book We Never Went to the Moon: America’s Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle in 1976. The theory remained fringe until February 2001, when Fox Broadcasting aired the hour-long special “Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon?” Viewed by millions, it gave the claims mainstream exposure and fueled decades of online discussion.
The flag was equipped with a horizontal telescoping rod along its top edge so it would remain visible and not hang limply in the vacuum. When astronauts twisted the flagpole into the lunar soil, the fabric rippled. Because there is no atmosphere on the Moon, those ripples had no air resistance to dampen them and continued oscillating for much longer than they would on Earth. High-resolution footage shows the flag moves only when the pole is physically touched — never spontaneously.
This is a matter of photographic exposure. The lunar surface in direct sunlight is extraordinarily bright (albedo similar to fresh asphalt under noon sun). To correctly expose the astronauts, the surface, and the spacecraft, cameras used fast shutter speeds (typically 1/125 to 1/250 second) and apertures of f/8 to f/11. Stars are far too faint to register under those settings — exactly the same reason you cannot see stars in daytime photos taken on Earth without long-exposure techniques.
The Apollo spacecraft followed a trajectory that passed rapidly through the thinner, outer portions of the Van Allen belts (total transit time approximately 1–2 hours). The spacecraft’s aluminum hull and equipment provided shielding equivalent to about 7–10 g/cm² of material. Measured crew doses ranged from 0.16 to 1.14 rad (1.6–11.4 mGy) across all missions — comparable to a few medical CT scans and far below levels that cause acute radiation sickness.
Shadows on uneven terrain viewed in perspective appear non-parallel even under a single distant light source (the Sun). When the topography is mapped and shadows are corrected for perspective, they align perfectly parallel. Independent 3D reconstructions from stereo pairs confirm this.
The crosshairs are etched onto a glass plate inside the camera. When a bright white object (e.g., an astronaut’s suit) is overexposed, it bleeds onto the film and can wash out thin black lines. This is a well-understood phenomenon called “halation” in film photography and occurs in many Apollo images exactly as expected.
The “C” appears only on lower-quality prints circulated in the 1970s and 1980s. High-resolution scans of the original film show nothing but a hair or fiber that contaminated the printing process. The same rock photographed on a different magazine roll has no marking.
More than 400,000 people across government, industry, and academia contributed to Apollo. Six crewed landings produced 382 kg of lunar samples with verified isotopic and mineral signatures impossible to fake with 1960s technology. Lunar dust behavior (sharp parabolic arcs, no billowing) is consistent only with vacuum and 1/6 g.
Astronauts wore integrated pressure suits with smooth-soled inner boots. For surface EVAs they pulled on separate lunar overshoes manufactured by ILC Dover with distinctive silicone ribbed treads. High-resolution Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter images of the footprints match the overshoe pattern exactly.
On August 2, 1971, Commander David Scott performed Galileo’s classic experiment live on the lunar surface: he released a falcon feather and a 1.32 kg aluminum geological hammer from the same height. In the absence of atmosphere and under 1/6 Earth gravity, both objects accelerated identically and struck the ground simultaneously. This simple, elegant demonstration — performed in real time on live television — remains one of the most compelling pieces of evidence that humans were indeed on the Moon.
Apollo 11, 14, and 15 crews placed arrays of corner-cube retroreflectors on the Moon. Observatories worldwide — including ones in the former Soviet Union, France, Germany, Australia, and the U.S. — continue to bounce laser pulses off these arrays daily to measure the Earth–Moon distance to millimeter precision. These experiments have been running continuously since 1969 and remain an active part of modern geodesy and general-relativity testing.
Spacecraft from Japan (Kaguya, 2009), India (Chandrayaan-1 & 2), China (Chang’e series), and NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (2009–present) have all imaged the Apollo landing sites in high resolution. Descent stages, rover tracks, footprints, and discarded equipment are clearly visible exactly where history records they should be.
After more than five decades of scrutiny by professional scientists, engineers, photographers, and independent researchers, no credible evidence has ever emerged that the Apollo moon landings were faked. The physical artifacts, lunar samples, ongoing laser-ranging experiments, and imagery from multiple nations all corroborate the historical record.
The Apollo program remains one of humanity’s greatest technical and exploratory achievements. Twelve human beings walked on another world between 1969 and 1972, and the evidence of their journeys is still visible — and measurable — today.