Journalism of Courage
The US space agency NASA has dismissed reality star Kim Kardashian’s claim that the 1969 Moon landing was staged.
“Yes, we’ve been to the Moon before… six times!” NASA’s acting administrator Sean Duffy wrote on social media, responding to Kardashian’s remarks made during the latest episode of The Kardashians.
In the episode, Kardashian told co-star Sarah Paulson she believed the Moon landing “didn’t happen”. She also showed Paulson an online interview that she claimed featured astronaut Buzz Aldrin, saying, “There was no scary moment because it didn’t happen.” It is unclear which source she was referring to or if the quotes were genuine.
Kardashian later told a producer, “I centre conspiracies all the time,” adding, “I think it was fake. I’ve seen a few videos on Buzz Aldrin talking about how it didn’t happen. He says it all the time now, in interviews. Maybe we should find Buzz Aldrin.”
After the episode aired, Duffy responded by tagging Kardashian on X. He wrote that NASA’s Moon missions were real and pointed to the agency’s ongoing Artemis programme, which aims to return astronauts to the lunar surface. “We won the last space race and we will win this one too,” he said.
Kardashian replied, asking about another topic: “Wait… what’s the tea on 3I Atlas?!?!” referring to a distant interstellar object astronomers say could be one of the oldest comets ever observed.
Duffy later invited Kardashian to visit the Kennedy Space Center for the upcoming Artemis launch.
Experts have repeatedly rejected claims that the 1969 Apollo 11 mission was a hoax.
“Every single argument claiming that NASA faked the Moon landings has been discredited,” the Institute of Physics told the BBC.
