17-07-2025
Resurfaced clips of Buzz Aldrin reignite Apollo 11 landing conspiracy theory as US marks 56th anniversary of first man to walk on the moon
Resurfaced clips of Buzz Aldrin have reignited an old conspiracy theory about the 1969 moon landing, with scientists once again having to debunk it.
As the United States prepares to mark the 56th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing, old clips of Buzz Aldrin have resurfaced, which have reignited a conspiracy theory claiming the iconic 1969 moon landing never happened.
The clips, which show Aldrin on the Late Night with Conan O'Brien Show back in 2000 have, according to some social media commentators, given credence to the theory that man never made it to the lunar surface.
In the video, Aldrin responded to a quip by host Conan O'Brien saying that he watched the moon landing as a boy.
'No, you didn't,' Aldrin snapped. "There wasn't any television, there wasn't anyone taking a picture. You watched an animation," he said.
The video, which has since racked up more than a million views online, has led to conspiracy theorists in the United States taking it as gospel that the moon landings were faked and were staged by NASA to fool the Soviet Union.
A subsequent 2015 clip has also gone viral, with an eight-year-old girl asking the NASA veteran why NASA has not returned to the moon since, to which he replied, 'Because we didn't go there, and that's the way it happened.'
Doubt over the moon landing took root in the mid-1970s, fuelled by public mistrust after Watergate and the Pentagon Papers. Theories about staged sets, lighting inconsistencies, and suspicious interviews have persisted ever since. — Stew Peters (@realstewpeters) March 20, 2023
NASA has repeatedly dismissed such claims, pointing to telemetry data, lunar rock samples, and the testimonies of thousands of engineers, scientists, and astronauts as proof of the mission's authenticity.
In fact, a Reuters fact check from 2023 has debunked the 2000 clip, with the news agency reporting that Aldrin's comments are related to animation graphics that television networks used to illustrate the moon landings.
The news agency also debunked the 2015 clip, which was a question-and-answer session at the Oxford Union.
They said the clips edited out elements where Aldrin was talking about his fears of a technical failure in the craft that could have caused a catastrophic fire like the Apollo 1 disaster or caused a decompression sending himself and Neil Armstrong into the vacuum of space.
Aldrin is the only surviving member of the Apollo 11 team after Neil Armstrong and Michael Collins died in 2012 and 2021, respectively.
In the 2024 US election, he endorsed Donald Trump for the presidency after he made a promise to put an American astronaut back onto the moon.
