No, photo of Nixon with moon picture isn’t proof the moon landing was a hoax | Fact check

August 7, 2023 admin

The claim: Post implies image of lunar surface in Nixon’s office proves moon landing was fake

An Aug. 1 Instagram post (direct link, archive link) shows President Richard Nixon sitting at a desk while holding a phone to his ear.

“Nixon talking to Apollo 11 on a landline phone with a picture taken from the moon in the background,” reads text on the image. “Take your time.”

Some commenters saw the post as evidence the moon landing was faked.

The post was liked more than 200 times in three days.

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Our rating: Missing context

The implied claim here is wrong. The image shows Nixon speaking to the astronauts on the Apollo 11 mission. The framed photo on the wall behind him, though, was taken during the earlier Apollo 8 mission.

‘Earthrise’ was taken during Apollo 8 mission

On July 20, 1969, Nixon spoke to Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin shortly after they became the first humans to set foot on the moon.

Nixon, who described the two-minute conversation as “the most historic phone call ever made from the White House,” made the call from a phone in the White House’s Oval Office, which was linked to the astronauts by NASA’s Mission Control Center in Houston.

A video from the Richard Nixon Pre s idential Library shows Nixon talking to the Apollo 11 astronauts, and it also shows a framed photo of the lunar surface hanging on a nearby wall. In a slightly different video of the same event from BBC America, Nixon is shown from a similar angle as the image in the Instagram post.

Fact check: False claim moon visible during daytime is proof of flat Earth

However, the photo on Nixon’s wall of Earth rising over the moon’s surface wasn’t taken during that same Apollo 11 mission, as the post implies.

Instead, the photo, which became known as “Earthrise,” was taken more than six months earlier on Dec. 24, 1968, by astronaut Bill Anders aboard Apollo 8, the first crewed spacecraft to circumnavigate the moon, according to NASA.

The picture isn’t proof the moon landing was faked. Evidence that the NASA crewed moon landings occurred includes photos and videos captured by astronauts on the moon as well as modern satellite photos documenting past lunar activity.

While there had been differing accounts of who took the “Earthrise” photo, a visualization created with data from NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter revealed Anders took it.

The social media user who shared the post could not be reached for comment.