There are lots and lots of people who still believe that the moon landing did not actually happen and I kind of feel like we should get to the bottom of this and see if we can recreate the moon landing then maybe there is a possibility that it could have actually been done on a soundstage back in 1969.
Some conspiracy theories even proposed that the moon landing was filmed to prove that America was better than Russia. According to them, at that time America was not so well-developed that they could do space travel. They also pointed out at some footage and photos as evidences. But what is right and what is wrong? Well, in this blog we will discuss about it.
Was the moon landing fake?
There are lots of compelling evidences that the moon landing didn’t happen and was staged. Yes, the moon landing did happened. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins were the first three astronauts who did the very first moon travel with Apollo 11. It is pretty weird that even 22% of American still do not believe that moon landing did actually happened. So, I did a lot of research and found the most asked questions by conspiracy theories about moon landing.
Issue with the flag:
If there is no wind on the moon then how come the flag is blowing in the wind? This is the question which has been asked for a long time by conspiracy theories. According to them, this was filmed in a studio and they could not help with the atmosphere of the earth. So, it was a mistake made by NASA. But let me tell you the real answer.
First of all, the flag was not like the ordinary flag. It was L shaped. The rectangular flag was attached in the L shaped stick. The second thing is Newton’s first law of motion; that is the Inertia, which is a force of an object in motion, remains in motion until any external force stops it. In the earth, any moving object stops due to some factors like air resistance and gravity. But gravity on the moon is so weak compared to the earth and also there is no atmosphere, hence no wind. So from the force of them putting the flag into the ground that’s where movement of the flag comes from and there was no gravity or force in the atmosphere to stop it. This is the reason why the flag was blowing.
No stars:
If the photos are real where are the stars? In every photo we can clearly see the blank black space. We should see the stars right? But that didn’t happen. According to the conspiracy theories it was filmed in a studio where the black background was taken in use.
It has mainly two possible explanations:
• According to NASA, the moon surface is highly reflective; that means it reflects most of light incident on it. As the light from the stars are not so intense, that is why the stars cannot be seen from the moon surface.
• At the time of capturing the photos the camera used the fast exposure setting. This setting is used to dim the background light to make the targeted photo clearly visible. An excellent example of this setting is ISS (International Space Station). In most of the pictures of space taken by ISS, the background stars cannot be seen. So, are those pictures also fake?
Multiple sources of light:
In the moon, there are not many sources of light except sunlight. So, theoretically the shadows made by the objects should be in the same direction. But in most of the pictures we can clearly see the shadows in different directions. Conspiracy theory says that it was filmed in the studio where multiple sources of light were used. NASA explained this phenomenon with example. It can be explained with two possible explanations.
• When a surface is not completely plain then this phenomenon occurs. It can also be seen in some hilly areas or in asymmetrical surfaces of earth. The moon’s surface is also not completely plain. There are many craters and hilly areas which are the main cause of this phenomenon.
• Obviously at that time, sun was the only source of light. But some additional things did the job of multiple light sources. Those are the reflective surface of moon, astronauts’ space suit, sunlight etc.
The lunar module did not form crater at the time of landing:
In general, after landing a craft on the ground, it makes a small crater bottom of it due to the pressure of the fuel. But in this case there are no craters formed by the lunar module. Conspiracy theory says that this is a solid evidence of proving the moon landing was fake. But according to NASA this was a game of force and pressure. Force is nothing but mass times acceleration and pressure is force per unit area.
That means if the impacted area is much greater, then the pressure will be the minimum. During the landing of the lunar module, the thrust was down too much and the landed area was almost twice than the nozzle. This reduced the effect of pressure and that is why the lunar module did not form any crater. But obviously the pressure blew some amount of dust into the area.
Besides these, there are many claims of conspiracy theories about the moon landing. But, here are some points of making the moon landing real.
- Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin left behind in the moon some unwanted junks like rovers, landers and their flag.
- The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) took a photograph of Apollo 11 landing site during encountering the moon’s orbit in 2009.
- India’s one of the biggest mission Chandrayaan 1 and china’s Chang’e 2 lunar probe captured some images of Apollo 11 as a proof.
- A Japanese probe SELENE (Selenological and Engineering Explorer) compared an image of Apollo 15 landing site with its own 3D terrain camera images.
- As evidence, the astronauts took some samples of rocks and dust to earth for further experiments. After studying the samples it was proven that such types of materials are not found on earth.
So, these are some kind of evidences which proves moon landing was not fake.
About Author: Mostafa M. Hassan has a total work experience of 10 months in STEM Learning. He is a Program Implementation Associate.
