Man on the Moon: Debunking Existing Conspiracy Theories About the American Mission

Man on the Moon: Debunking Existing Conspiracy Theories About the American Mission

In July 1969, tens of millions of people around the world watched the first man set foot on the moon.

But there are still people who insist that man never set foot on the moon.

According to the US space agency NASA, various polls have found that about five percent of Americans believe that the claim that humans set foot on the moon was a hoax.

This number may seem small, but it is enough to keep conspiracy theories alive.

The main argument of the moon landing theorists is that the US space program in the 1960s did not have the necessary technology to successfully land on the moon.

Their argument is that after realizing that this was impossible, NASA faked the landing somewhere to give a decisive blow in the competition with Russia for the bid to go to space. At the time, the Soviet Union was ahead of the United States in going to the moon and their spacecraft crashed while landing on the moon's surface.

Stories that question the authority of Neil Armstrong's "one step for a man, one giant leap for humanity" quote have been circulating since the Apollo 11 return home.

After the publication of the book 'We Never Went to the Moon: America's Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle' in 1976, the number of people who believed that the story of the US moon trip was a hoax increased.

It was written by a journalist named Bill Kessing. He was working as a public relations officer in a NASA-affiliated agency.

The book contained many arguments that were later used by those who argued that no one had ever been to the moon.

Attached to that list is "evidence" provided by journalists - no stars visible in the background of the moon's surface and an American flag flying in a windless atmosphere.

Michael Rich, a space researcher at the University of California, says there is a scientific basis for this claim.

The flag was crumpled due to the force that Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin exerted on the surface of the moon to bury the flag.

And the scientist says that the gravity of the moon is six times less than that of the earth, so it is in the same shape.

Those who say that man has not reached the moon, put forward the argument that there are no stars in the sky in the pictures of the moon.

The image has the highest contrast between dark and light.

Why? Brian Koberlin, a professor of astrophysics at the Rochester Institute of Technology, argues that the moon's surface reflects sunlight and therefore appears extremely bright in photographs.

He says, "This brightness makes the less bright light of the stars darker by comparison. That's why we don't see stars in the pictures of the Apollo 11 targets."

It must have taken a bit more time to take the photos too.

Even the astronauts' footprints have become a target of conspiracy theorists.

They argue - Aldrin's amazing footprints are impossible to form due to the lack of moisture on the moon.

But Arizona State University professor Mark Robinson has done a scientific analysis of it.

He says that the soil of the moon is covered by a layer of rock and a layer of dust called regolith.

This layer is very soft and the pressure exerted by stepping on it makes a clear impression.

Since the soil particles are sticky to each other, footprints remain even when the shoes are removed.

"Footprints on the surface of the moon will remain there for tens of millions of years because there is no atmosphere and no air," says Robinson.

A popular belief is that the radiation ring around the Earth must have killed the astronauts.

They are called the Van Allen Belts and are caused by the interaction between the solar wind and Earth's magnetic field.

In the early stages, scientists were very interested in radiation because of the fear that radiation could have fatal effects on astronauts.

But according to NASA, the Apollo 11 crew stayed in the Van Allen Belts region for less than two hours during the lunar journey. NASA argues that they were not affected because they were only in the high-radiation area for five minutes.

What evidence is there against such beliefs?

NASA recently released a photo showing the current state of the Apollo 11 landing area.

Since 2009, images sent by LRO, the lunar rover, show that the moon actually landed.

In the photo, you can see traces of the Apollo 11 landing site and the remnants of the spacecraft.

LRO shows that the flag that the group of six buried is still buried, and it also captures the shadow cast on the moon's surface.

Although the conspiracy theories mentioned above have been proven to be unfounded, they are still very popular.

The truth is that there is enough scientific evidence to prove that Neil Armstrong stepped on the moon on July 20, 1969.

A question frequently asked by conspiracy theorists is why the Soviet Union, which was in the middle of the Cold War with the US and was secretly working on sending a man to the moon, did not join them.

"If we hadn't landed on the moon and faked it, the Soviets would have had both the will and the ability to refute us," argues former NASA chief historian Robert Lunius.

He said, "They didn't say a word about it. That's a very strong thing for me."