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| - Fact Check: One giant leap of logic! Footprint theory about moon landing 'hoax' does not add up
Social media users claimed the Apollo 11 moon landing was fake after comparing Neil Armstrong's boots to the footprint on the moon.
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India Today Fact Check
The footprint was Edwin Aldrin’s and not Armstrong’s. Also, during the Apollo 11 mission, the crew used two sets of boots — one for space and the other for walking on the moon.
More than half a century after Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin walked on the moon, conspiracy theories about the moon landing being fake remain timeless. The latest among these is a set of two photos — one of a boot's sole and the other of a footprint — that supposedly proves NASA lied.
The first photo supposedly shows the bottom of Armstrong’s space boots. The second is that of his footprint on the moon. The boot lacks ridges on its sole and the footprint is noticeably ridged. One such post was captioned, “Look guys I'm telling you. NASA is lying to us. I did some research today.”
AFWA’s investigation found that the footprint was Aldrin’s and not Armstrong’s. Also, Apollo 11 crew used different sets of boots.
AFWA Probe
While investigating the claim, we first reverse-searched the two photos. On NASA’s website, we found some strikingly similar photos.
The photo showed the complete gear used by an Apollo 11 astronaut. And the sole of the boot shown in the photo looked very similar to the one in the viral photo. This meant that the first photo, at least, was likely authentic.
We also found the footprint photo on the NASA website as well. However, the footprint did not belong to Armstrong.
Its caption read: “One of the first steps taken on the Moon, this is an image of Buzz Aldrin's bootprint from the Apollo 11 mission.”
Since both photos were present on NASA’s website, and at the same time, part of the Apollo 11 mission, we decided to dig further to verify if the claim was indeed true. We found a report that noted two sets of boots were used in the Apollo 11 mission.
While the first one was used when the astronauts were in space, a galosh was used over this boot before Armstrong and Aldrin stepped onto the moon. This explains why the footprint looked different from the boot’s sole.
Hence, we concluded that the social media post calling the moon landing a hoax was misleading.
(With inputs from Yash Mittal)
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