US space agency NASA has denied Kim Kardashian's conspiracy theory that the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing never happened.
In the latest episode of her family's hit reality show, “The Kardashians,” Kardashian said she believes the important moon exploration was a hoax, citing a series of articles that she claims explain why some aspects of footage and photos taken on the moon are unreliable.
Shortly after the episode aired, NASA's Acting Administrator Sean Duffy reprimanded Kardashian, writing in an X post, “Yes, we've been to the moon…6 times!”
Kardashian responded to her own post with, “Wait… What's that tea in 3I Atlas?!?!!!!!!!!???” Astronomers say the comet is the third object in history to pass “close to our heavens” from outside the solar system.
Duffy responded with an invitation to the launch of NASA's Artemis mission to the moon at Kennedy Space Center.
“I'm so happy to hear everyone's excitement about the Artemis mission to the moon. You're officially invited to the launch at Kennedy Space Center!” he wrote.
The conspiracy theory that the moon landing never happened has existed for decades, even though it has been consistently debunked.
In the episode, Kardashian is seen showing her actor Sarah Paulson, who co-stars in Ryan Murphy's legal drama All's Fair, excerpts from an interview with Buzz Aldrin, who took the first step on the moon with Neil Armstrong.
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“There were no scary moments because it didn't happen. It may have been scary, but it wasn't because it didn't happen,” she read, adding, “He says that all the time in interviews,” she added, “Maybe we should find Buzz Aldrin.”
Kardashian was referring to comments Aldrin made in response to a student's question about the Apollo 11 mission during a 2015 speech at the Oxford University Students' Union.
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“What was the scariest moment of your trip?'' the student asked.
“The scariest thing? That didn't happen,” Aldrin replied with a laugh. “It might have been scary. It's a circuit breaker,” he said, and the host asked, “(unintelligible) circuit breaker?”
“I'm glad someone helped me,” Aldrin said, continuing. “I kicked up some dust, picked up some rocks, and then went back inside, but of course I had to get him up the ladder because it’s dangerous to carry a big box of rocks up a ladder.”
He said the crew and team had planned ahead and Aldrin entered the cabin first so he could hand the box to his colleague.
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“Then we were supposed to tidy up, and tidying means getting rid of things you don't need so that it's not too heavy to lift,” he said, recounting the process of pressurizing and depressurizing the cabin and connecting it to spacecraft systems, and how the crew back on Earth said they could hear their voices through a seismometer that recorded the sound vibrations “bouncing off the moon.”
He then described how the crew returned to the cabin and noticed something in the stone dust they had been collecting.
“There was something that looked like it wasn't there. It was a circuit breaker. A broken circuit breaker, that's it,” he said.
Aldrin added an “engine arm” and breaker label, which he said belonged to a system used for landing engines. “That’s what keeps us on track and brings us home.”
He then stated that he “used a pen to push it in” and called it “an easy one.”
Later, in one scene in the trailer, Kardashian tells the crew behind the camera, “I'm always centered around conspiracies,” before elaborating on her disbelief that the star is not visible in any of the evidence photos taken from the landing. According to the Institute of Physics, this is a common argument from skeptics.
The institute says there is a simple explanation for the lack of stars: the photo was taken during daylight hours.
“This means that the star's light has lost the battle to the moon's extremely bright surface, which is too dim to be photographed,” the website says.
The institute says all conspiracy theories that the moon landing was a hoax have been disproved.
Those who say the landing was staged, the expert organization argues, often argue that the U.S. government fabricated missions after Apollo 11 to deal a decisive blow to the Soviet Union in the space race, increase funding for NASA, or divert attention from the Vietnam War.
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