Fact Check: Video shows Aldrin recalling Apollo 11 moment, not saying moon landing was fake
The claim: Video shows Buzz Aldrin admitting the moon landing didn’t happen
An Instagram post claims to show astronaut Buzz Aldrin admitting that the famous 1969 moon landing “didn’t happen.”
The Oct. 4 post features a video showing an audience member asking Aldrin, who is seated on a stage, what the “scariest moment” of his journey to the moon was. He appears to respond by saying, “It didn’t happen. It could have been scary.”
“Buzz Aldrin yet again admitting the moon landing ‘didn’t happen,’” reads the post’s caption. “How many times does he have to say it before the sheep believe him?”
The post was liked more than 500 times in a week.
But the claim is false.
A review of Aldrin’s full comments reveals he was saying that there was no “scariest moment” during the mission, not that the moon landing “didn’t happen.” The full clip shows him talking extensively about the details of the mission.
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USA TODAY reached out to the user who shared the claim for comment.
The post takes clip of Aldrin out of context
The clip featured in the Instagram post was taken from a Q&A Aldrin did at the Oxford Union in March 2015.
The Union describes itself as “the world’s foremost debating society,” but there’s no debating whether the moon landing happened. NASA, museums, newspapers and libraries house a trove of information about the mission. This includes an array of documents, photos, videos and rock samples.
The full video of the event, which can be found on YouTube, shows that while Aldrin initially said “it didn’t happen” in response to the question about the “scariest moment,” he was not referring to the mission itself. Upon further prompting, he recounts how at one point while on the moon he discovered a broken circuit breaker on the floor of the lunar module. The Instagram video cuts off these remarks.
“I looked down and below this sort of dust there was something that didn’t look like it belonged there,” says Aldrin. “There was a circuit breaker, a broken circuit breaker.”
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Aldrin said to fix the problem, he used a pen to push the circuit breaker in, which sent electrical power to the ascent engine to lift the spacecraft back to Earth.
USA TODAY has previously debunked claims that video footage, a lunar footprint and WikiLeaks proved the moon landing to be a hoax.
Our rating: False
Based on our research, we rate FALSE the claim that a video shows Aldrin admitting the moon landing didn’t happen. In the full video, Aldrin tells stories about his experiences on the moon. There is widespread documentation that the moon landing happened.
Our fact-check sources:
- Buzz Aldrin’s website, accessed Oct. 7, Q&A AT THE OXFORD UNION
- History, Dec. 3, 2019, When Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong Were Nearly Stranded on the Moon
- History, Jan. 30, 2019, 1969 Moon Landing
- PolitiFact, Oct. 6, Aldrin didn’t say the moon landing was a hoax
- Nixon Library, accessed Oct. 10, Apollo 11: One Giant Leap for Mankind
- NASA’s Apollo 11 Lunar Surface Journal, accessed Oct. 10, Mobility and Photography
- NASA’s Apollo 11 Flight Journal, accessed Oct. 10, Apollo 11 Mission Documents
- Oxford Union, June 6, 2015, Buzz Aldrin – Q&A on YouTube
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