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| - FACT CHECK: Do Neil Armstrong’s Space Boots Not Match A Footprint He Left On The Moon?
An image shared on Facebook claims American astronaut Neil Armstrong’s spacesuit does not match his footprints on the moon, proving that the moon landing was faked.
Verdict: False
The footprint pictured is from astronaut Buzz Aldrin. It matches overshoes that astronauts wore over the boots of their spacesuits.
Fact Check:
The post features two pictures: one on the left showing a spacesuit with boots that seem to have a smooth sole, and one on the right showing a footprint of a shoe with a tread left on the moon. “Hey… Neil Armstrong’s astronaut suit, preserved in a museum … doesn’t match up with his footprints on the moon!” reads text below the two images.
One Facebook user shared the image with the caption, “A lie doesn’t last forever,” while another iteration of the claim includes text reading, “The lies they tell (NASA),” seemingly referencing the decades-old baseless conspiracy theory that the moon landing was faked.
Armstrong is credited as being the first person to ever walk on the moon, an accomplishment he achieved during the 1969 Apollo 11 mission to the moon, according to the NASA. He was followed shortly after by Aldrin. (RELATED: Do 89% Of Americans Under 45 Believe The 1969 Moon Landing Never Happened?)
While the photo on the left does, in fact, show Armstrong’s spacesuit on display at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C., the image on the right does not show his footprint on the moon. Through a reverse image search, Check Your Fact found that the footprint actually belongs to Aldrin, according to the photo’s description on the National Gallery of Art’s website.
The footprint on the moon is not “evidence” the moon landing was faked. Both Armstrong and Aldrin wore treaded overshoes over the boots on their spacesuits when they walked on the moon in 1969, according to Cathleen Lewis, a curator in the Space History Department at the National Air and Space Museum.
“All twelve Apollo astronauts who walked on the surface of the moon wore lunar overshoes,” said Lewis in an email to Check Your Fact. “These oversize galoshes had blue silicone soles that left the iconic footprint in the lunar surface dust.”
Lewis went on to explain that these overshoes were intended to give the astronauts greater traction while they walked on the moon. The image of Aldrin’s footprint, as well as an image of Aldrin wearing the blue overshoes, were shared in a New York Times article about the moon boots.
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