Tag: moon landing

One big…lie? As NASA delays its moon landing to 2026, conspiracy theories are reignited online – with one sceptic claiming the space agency ‘can’t figure out how they did it the first time’

It has been more than 50 years since humanity first set foot on the moon. 

And ever since, conspiracy theories that the landing was faked have been rife.

While none of these theories have any grounding in reality, that hasn’t stopped them from spreading like wildfire.

Now, as NASA delays its highly anticipated return to the moon to 2026, social media has once again been flooded with claims that man has never visited our lunar satellite. 

The delayed missions have even led some sceptics to claim that ‘they can’t figure out how they did it the first time’. 

Citing safety concerns, NASA announced that Artemis II, which will complete a lunar fly-by, has been delayed until September next year.

Meanwhile, Artemis III, which will once again put astronauts on the moon, won’t now take place until September 2026.

These sudden and unexpected delays have ignited a wave of conspiracy theory content on X (formerly Twitter).

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NASA-backed Peregrine One has ‘NO CHANCE’ of landing on the moon as leaky fuel tank has 40 hours left – and $108M craft with JFK’s DNA and other’s ashes are set to drift into the darkness

America’s first lunar lander in over 50 years has been abandoned due to critical loss of fuel during its journey to the moon.

Astrobotic, which launched the first private lunar mission Monday, revealed the Peregrine spacecraft is expected to run out of fuel in about 40 hours.

‘Given the propellant leak, there is, unfortunately, no chance of a soft landing on the moon,’ the Pittsburg-based company shared in an announcement.

The 1.2-ton lander is carrying $108 million worth of NASA instruments, a hair sample from US President John F Kennedy, and the ashes of 60 other people set to be dropped on the lunar surface.

When the fuel is expended, Peregrine’s solar panels will slip into darkness, and the batteries will quickly drain. 

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Prada to help design NASA spacesuits for astronauts to wear to the moon on 2025 Artemis III mission

Prada’s next runway walk will be out of this world -literally – as the designer brand will soon help design spacesuits for the 2025 Artemis III mission to the moon. 

The high-priced designer brand has been contracted by NASA to help make the suits astronauts will wear to the moon – the first visit to the lunar surface since 1972.

The contract is a partnership between the Italian company and Axiom Space which was awarded a contract to help modernize and make the suits more comfortable. 

Early versions of the suit were released in March and officials said it was designed to fit perfectly for both women and men – a necessary detail for the 2025 mission.  

The Artemis III mission is expected to be the first time in history that a woman and a person of color will walk on the moon. 

According to Reuters, Prada’s engineers will help to develop ‘solutions for materials and design features to protect astronauts against the challenge of space.’ 

Axiom also commended Prada on its use of making and using materials, stating the expertise in this area as another reason for the deal. 

Prada – more than 100 year old fashion house – is best known for their expensive bags and clothing items which can go for thousands of dollars. 

In a joint statement, the companies said Prada’s goal will also be to make the suits more comfortable for the suits for the four astronauts set to orbit. 

The astronauts on the Artemis III were named by NASA earlier this year as Jeremy Hansen, Victor Glover, commander Reid Wiseman, and Christina Koch. 

The Houston-based Axiom was given their contract by NASA last year in an effort to modernize previous space suits. 

In the past, the suits were designed specifically for the male body and incorporated bulky fabrics and heavier equipment. 

A statement from NASA said that they support the partnership between NASA and Axiom as the deal will ensure the new suits meet critical safety standards. 

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‘No proof’ US landed on moon – Ex-Russian space boss

The former head of Russia’s Roscosmos space agency, Dmitry Rogozin, has expressed doubt that the US Apollo 11 mission really landed on the Moon in 1969, saying he has yet to see conclusive proof.  

In a post on his Telegram channel on Sunday, Rogozin said he began his personal quest for the truth “about ten years ago” when he was still working in the Russian government, and that he grew skeptical about whether the Americans had actually set foot on the Moon when he compared how exhausted Soviet cosmonauts looked upon returning from their flights, and how seemingly unaffected the Apollo 11 crew was by contrast.  

Rogozin said he sent requests for evidence to Roscosmos at the time. All he received in response was a book featuring Soviet Cosmonaut Aleksey Leonov’s account of how he talked to the American astronauts and how they told him they had been on the Moon.  

The former official wrote that he continued with his efforts when he was appointed head of Roscosmos in 2018. However, according to Rogozin, no evidence was presented to him. Instead, several unnamed academics angrily criticized him for undermining the “sacred cooperation with NASA,” he claimed. 

The former Roscosmos chief also said he had “received an angry phone call from a top-ranking official” who supposedly accused him of complicating international relations.  

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Apollo Zero (full movie)

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Think about this: to date, only three countries have been able to put a man merely in Earth orbit – the United States, Russia, and China. That speaks to how difficult it is just to get into orbit. Next, consider how far away the moon is from the Earth: 240,000 miles. Since the alleged moon landings, no country even claims to have gone more than 400 miles from Earth and that was in the Space Shuttle. The International Space Station orbits at 200 miles above Earth. There is a big difference between 240,000 miles and 400 miles. Why can’t anyone make it more than 400 miles from Earth today if we could make a 480,000 mile round trip in 1969?

NASA further asserts that three men were loaded into a rocket, flew 240,000 miles to the moon and then achieved lunar orbit. They say the spacecraft separated and two astronauts flew 60 miles to the surface of the moon, in a vacuum and 1/6 Earth gravity. They then hung out on the moon for up to three days in 250 degree heat, hit golf balls, rode a moon buggy — but what powered their life support and equipment? They say BATTERIES.

They then supposedly blasted off the surface of the moon, docked with the third man going around the moon at over 4000 miles per hour, and made it 240,000 miles back to Earth. They re-entered Earth’s atmosphere going 25,000 mph, but parachutes assured a safe landing in the ocean.”

Rolls-Royce wins UK funds for ‘Moon’ nuclear reactors

British aerospace giant Rolls-Royce said Friday it had secured UK funding to develop small nuclear reactors that could provide power on the Moon.

Rolls said the UK Space Agency had offered it £2.9 million ($3.5 million) to help research “how nuclear power could be used to support a future Moon base for astronauts”.

“Scientists and engineers at Rolls-Royce are working on the micro-reactor program to develop technology that will provide power needed for humans to live and work on the Moon,” the aerospace company added in a statement.

Rolls forecast its first car-sized reactor would be ready to be sent to the Moon by 2029.

Friday’s news comes as US space agency NASA aims to return humans to the Moon in 2025.

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China could claim the moon as its own territory and BAN US astronauts from touching down, NASA boss warns – as the two countries battle in new space race to land on the lunar surface again

A chief at NASA is raising red flags over China’s ambitions to get to the moon. 

In a new interview, NASA Administrator Bill Nelson says he and others within the scientific agency are growing increasingly concerned over what the country plans to do when they make it to the moon. 

Nelson believes China could attempt to corner the market on resource-rich locations on the moon’s surface and try to block out the U.S. and other countries looking to make it to the lunar object.

‘There is potentially mischief China can do on the moon,’ said one other official monitoring the ‘space race.’ 

The concerns come less than one month after three Chinese astronauts returned from a six month trip in which they helped to build and open a new space station. 

In an interview with Politico, Nelson said he and others are concerned the Communist nation will attempt to claim territory over the moon upon their arrival.

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China and the US Are Racing to Go Nuclear in Space

China has disclosed new details of its space exploration plan in the next decade, including the use of nuclear energy to power its moon base, intensifying its space race with the U.S. 

“We are now developing a new system that uses nuclear energy to address the moon station’s long-term, high-power energy demands,” said Wu Weiren, chief designer of the country’s Lunar Exploration Program, in an interview with state broadcaster CCTV on Monday. 

The outpost is developed in conjunction with Russia and is expected to be built by 2028 on the lunar south pole, which has patches of sunny spots as well as permanently shadowed craters. The U.S. has identified potential landing sites in the same area for its Artemis 3 mission, which is scheduled to launch in late 2025 to put Americans back on the moon using a SpaceX lander.

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Wagging the moondoggie…

If the Moon landings were faked, then one question that naturally arises is: why would any government go to such extreme lengths to mount such an elaborate hoax?

The most obvious answer (and the one most frequently cited by skeptics) is to reclaim a sense of national pride that had been stripped away by America’s having played follow-the-leader with the Soviets for an entire decade. While this undoubtedly played a large role, there are other factors as well – factors that haven’t been as fully explored. But before we look at those, we must first deal with the question of whether it would have even been possible to pull off such an enormous hoax.

Could so many people have really been duped into believing such an outrageous lie, if that in fact was what it was? To answer that question, we have to keep in mind that we are talking about the summer of 1969 here. Those old enough to have been there will recall that they – along with the vast majority of politically active people in the country – spent that particular period of time primarily engaged in tripping on some really good acid (most likely from the lab of Mr. Owsley).

How hard then would it really have been to fool most of you? I probably could have stuck a fish bowl on my head, wrapped myself in aluminum foil, and then filmed myself high-stepping across my backyard and most of you would have believed that I was Moonwalking. Some of you couldn’t entirely rule out the possibility that everyone was walking on the Moon.

In truth, not everyone was fooled by the alleged Moon landings. Though it is rarely discussed these days, a significant number of people gave NASA’s television productions a thumbs-down. As Wired magazine has reported, “when Knight Newspapers polled 1,721 US residents one year after the first moon landing, it found that more than 30 percent of respondents were suspicious of NASA’s trips to the moon.” Given that overall trust in government was considerably higher in those pre-Watergate days, the fact that nearly a third of Americans doubted what they were ‘witnessing’ through their television sets is rather remarkable.

When Fox ran a special on the Moon landings some years back and reported that 1-in-5 Americans had doubts about the Apollo missions, various ‘debunking’ websites cried foul and claimed that the actual percentage was much lower. BadAstronomy.com, for example, claims that the actual figure is about 6%, and that roughly that many people will agree “with almost any question that is asked of them.” Hence, there are only a relative handful of kooks who don’t believe that we’ve ever been to the Moon.

All of those websites fail to mention, of course, that among the people who experienced the events as they were occurring, nearly 1-in-3 had doubts, a number considerably higher than the number that Fox used. And, needless to say, the ‘debunkers’ also failed to mention that 1-in-4 young Americans, a number also higher than the figure Fox used, have doubts about the Moon landings.

Returning then to the question of why such a ruse would be perpetrated, we must transport ourselves back to the year 1969. Richard Nixon has just been inaugurated as our brand new president, and his ascension to the throne is in part due to his promises to the American people that he will disengage from the increasingly unpopular war in Vietnam. But Tricky Dick has a bit of a problem on his hands in that he has absolutely no intention of ending the war. In fact, he would really, really like to escalate the conflict as much as possible. But to do so, he needs to set up a diversion – some means of stoking the patriotic fervor of the American people so that they will blindly rally behind him.

In short, he needs to wag the dog.

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