Conspiracy theories claim that some or all elements of the Apollo program and the associated Moon landings were hoaxes staged by NASA, possibly with the aid of other organizations. Such views are considered fringe. The most notable claim of these conspiracy theories is that the six crewed landings (1969–1972) were faked and that twelve Apollo astronauts did not actually land on the Moon. Since the mid-1970s, various groups and individuals have claimed that NASA and others knowingly misled the public into believing the landings happened by manufacturing, tampering with, or destroying evidence including photos, telemetry tapes, radio and TV transmissions, and Moon rock samples.
However, there is much third-party evidence for the landings, and there have been many detailed rebuttals to the hoax claims.Plait 2002, pp. 154–173 For instance, high-definition photos taken by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) of the Apollo landing sites have captured the Lunar Module descent stages and the tracks left by the astronauts. In 2012, images were released showing five of the six Apollo missions' American flags erected on the Moon still standing. The exception is that of Apollo 11, which has lain on the lunar surface since being blown over by the Lunar Module Ascent Propulsion System.
Experts in science and astronomy regard the claims as pseudoscience and demonstrably false. Opinion polls taken in various locations between 1994 and 2009 have shown that between 6% and 20% of Americans, 25% of Britons, and 28% of Russians surveyed believe that the crewed landings were faked. As late as 2001, the Fox television network documentary Conspiracy Theory: Did We Land on the Moon? claimed NASA faked the first landing in 1969 to win the Space Race. Even after Artemis II returned humans to the vicinity of the Moon in 2026, some conspiracy theorists claimed that mission was also faked.
Origins An early and influential book about the subject of a Moon-landing conspiracy, We Never Went to the Moon: America's Thirty Billion Dollar Swindle, was self-published in 1976 by Bill Kaysing, a former US Navy officer with a Bachelor of Arts in English.Kaysing 2002 Despite having no knowledge of rockets or technical writing,Kaysing 2002, p. 30 Kaysing was hired as a senior technical writer in 1956 by Rocketdyne, the company that built the F-1 engines used on the Saturn V rocket.Kaysing 2002, p. 80 He served as head of the technical publications unit at the company's Propulsion Field Laboratory until 1963. The many allegations in Kaysing's book effectively began discussion of faking of the Moon landings.Plait 2002, p. 157 The book claims that the chance of a successful crewed landing on the Moon was calculated to be 0.0017%, and that despite close monitoring by the USSR, it would have been easier for NASA to fake the Moon landings than to really go there.
In 1980, the Flat Earth Society accused NASA of faking the landings, arguing that they were staged by Hollywood with Walt Disney sponsorship, based on a script by Arthur C. Clarke and directed by Stanley Kubrick. Folklorist Linda Dégh suggests that writer-director Peter Hyams' film Capricorn One (1978), which shows a hoaxed journey to Mars in a spacecraft that looks identical to the Apollo craft, might have given a boost to the hoax theory's popularity in the post-Vietnam War era. Dégh sees a parallel with other attitudes during the post-Watergate era, when the American public were inclined to distrust official accounts. Dégh writes: "The mass media catapult these half-truths into a kind of twilight zone where people can make their guesses sound as truths. Mass media have a terrible impact on people who lack guidance." In A Man on the Moon,Chaikin 2007 (page needed) first published in 1994, Andrew Chaikin mentions that at the time of Apollo 8's lunar-orbit mission in December 1968,Attivissimo 2013, p. 70 similar conspiracy ideas were already in circulation.Dick & Launius 2007, pp. 63–64
Claimed motives of the United States and NASA Those who believe the Moon landings were faked offer several theories about the motives of NASA and the United States government. The three main theories are below.
Space Race Motivation for the United States to engage the Soviet Union in a Space Race can be traced to the Cold War. Landing on the Moon was viewed as a national and technological accomplishment that would generate world-wide acclaim. But going to the Moon would be risky and expensive, as exemplified by President John F. Kennedy famously stating in a 1962 speech that the United States chose to go it was hard.Chaikin 2007, p. 2, "We choose to go to the Moon! We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things – not because they are easy, but because they are hard." — Kennedy speaking at Rice University, September 12, 1962.
Hoax theory debunker Phil Plait says in his 2002 book Bad Astronomy that the Soviets – with their own competing Moon program, an extensive intelligence network and a formidable scientific community able to analyze NASA data – would have "cried foul" if the United States tried to fake a Moon landing,Plait 2002, p. 173 especially since their own program had failed. Proving a hoax would have been a huge propaganda win for the Soviets. Instead, the third edition (1970–1979) of the Great Soviet Encyclopedia contained many articles reporting the landings as factual, such as its article on Neil Armstrong. Their article on space exploration describes the Apollo 11 landing as "the third historic event" of the space age, following the launch of Sputnik in 1957, and Yuri Gagarin's flight in 1961. (Warning to avoid possible confusion: At the same cited web address the Soviet-era article is preceded by a 2013 article on space exploration from The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia)
Conspiracist Bart Sibrel responded, incorrectly asserting that, "the Soviets did not have the capability to track deep space craft until late in 1972, immediately after which, the last three Apollo missions were abruptly canceled." Those missions were canceled, not abruptly, but for cost-cutting reasons. The announcements were made in January and September 1970, two full years before the "late 1972" claimed by Sibrel."Apollo 18 through 20 – The Canceled Missions", Dr. David R. Williams, NASA, accessed July 19, 2006. (See Vietnam War below.)
In fact, the Soviets had been sending uncrewed spacecraft to the Moon since 1959, and "during 1962, deep space tracking facilities were introduced at IP-15 in Ussuriisk and IP-16 in Evpatoria (Crimean Peninsula), while Saturn communication stations were added to IP-3, 4 and 14," the last of which having a range. The Soviet Union tracked the Apollo missions at the Space Transmissions Corps, which was "fully equipped with the latest intelligence-gathering and surveillance equipment."Scheaffer 2004, p. 247 Vasily Mishin, in an interview for the article "The Moon Programme That Faltered," describes how the Soviet Moon program dwindled after the Apollo landings.
In May 2023 Dmitry Rogozin, former director general of the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, expressed doubt that U.S. astronauts landed on the Moon. He complained of not receiving a satisfactory answer when he asked his agency to provide evidence. He said his colleagues at Roscosmos were angry about his questions and did not want to undermine cooperation with NASA.
NASA funding and prestige Conspiracy theorists claim that NASA faked the landings to avoid humiliation and to ensure that it continued to get funding. NASA raised "about US$30 billion" to go to the Moon, and Kaysing claimed in his book that this could have been used to "pay off" many people.Kaysing 2002, p. 71 Since most conspiracists believe that sending men to the Moon was impossible at the time,Attivissimo 2013, p. 163 they argue that landings had to be faked to fulfill Kennedy's 1961 goal, "before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth." In fact, NASA accounted for the cost of Apollo to the US Congress in 1973, totaling US$25.4 billion.
Mary Bennett and David Percy claimed in the 2001 book Dark Moon: Apollo and the Whistle-Blowers, that, with all the known and unknown hazards,Bennett & Percy 2001, p. 77 NASA would not risk broadcasting an astronaut getting sick or dying on live television.Bennett & Percy 2001, pp. 330–331 The counter-argument generally given is that NASA in fact did incur a great deal of public humiliation and potential political opposition to the program by losing an entire crew in the Apollo 1 fire during a ground test. As a result, its upper management team was questioned by Senate and House of Representatives space oversight committees. There was in fact no video broadcast during either the landing or takeoff because of technological limitations.
Vietnam War The American Patriot Friends Network claimed in 2009 that the landings helped the United States government distract public attention from the unpopular Vietnam War, and so crewed landings suddenly ended about the same time that the United States ended its involvement in the war. In fact, the ending of the landings was not "sudden" (see Space Race above). The war was one of several federal budget items with which NASA had to compete; NASA's budget peaked in 1966, and fell by 42% by 1972.U.S. Office of Management and Budget This was the reason the final flights were cut, along with plans for even more ambitious follow-on programs such as a permanent space station and crewed flight to Mars.Hepplewhite, T.A. The Space Shuttle Decision: NASA's Search for a Reusable Space Vehicle, chapter 4. Washington, DC: National Aeronautics and Space Administration, 1999.
Hoax claims and rebuttals Many Moon-landing conspiracy theories have been proposed, alleging that the landings either did not occur and NASA staff lied, or that the landings did occur but not in the way that has been reported. Conspiracists have focused on perceived gaps or inconsistencies in the historical record of the missions. The foremost idea is that the whole crewed landing program was a hoax from start to end. Some claim that the technology did not exist to send men to the Moon or that the Van Allen radiation belts, solar flares, solar wind, coronal mass ejections, and cosmic rays made such a trip impossible.Kaysing 2002, pp. 7–8
Scientists Vince Calder and Andrew Johnson have given detailed answers to conspiracists' claims on the Argonne National Laboratory website. They show that NASA's portrayal of the Moon landing is fundamentally accurate, allowing for such common mistakes as mislabeled photos and imperfect personal recollections. Using the scientific process, any hypothesis may be rejected if it is contradicted by the observable facts. The "real landing" hypothesis is a single story since it comes from a single source, but there is no unity in the hoax hypothesis because hoax accounts vary between conspiracists.Ramsay 2006
Number of conspirators involved