Buzz Aldrin admitted the Moon landings were faked in an interview.
In the clip, Mr Aldrin appears to be explaining why astronauts haven’t returned to the Moon in decades, not that they never went at all. In other interviews, Mr Aldrin clearly claims he went to the Moon.
A video viewed more than 42,000 times on Instagram claims to show former astronaut Buzz Aldrin as he “admits [the] Moon landing was fake”.
The clip shows Mr Aldrin—the second person to ever set foot on the Moon—being interviewed by a young child and responding to the question: “Why has nobody been to the Moon in such a long time?”
During his response Mr Aldrin says: “I think I know… Because we didn't go there.” This part of his longer answer has been presented as proof that the 1969 Moon landing was faked—a longstanding conspiracy theory which we have written about before.
The video itself has a number of what appear to be jarring cuts, leading to comments suggesting that the clip must have been edited to change the meaning of Mr Aldrin’s words.
However, if we compare the Instagram clip to the full video of the interview, filmed in 2015, it is apparent that while the Instagram post may have been edited to cut some pauses in Mr Aldrin’s response, his actual words haven’t been changed.
But this doesn’t mean Mr Aldrin “admitted” the Moon landing was faked. Here’s what Mr Aldrin said in full: “That's not an eight-year-old's question. That's my question. I want to know. But I think I know. Because we didn't go there. And that's the way it happened.
“And if it didn't happen it's nice to know why it didn't happen so in the future, if we want to keep doing something, we need to know why something stopped in the past if we want to keep it going.”
While Mr Aldrin’s words are not that clear, it’s plausible he was responding to the question about why nobody had been to the Moon “in such a long time”, by explaining why astronauts hadn’t returned to the Moon. The last crewed expedition took place in 1972, with a total of 12 astronauts (all from US expeditions) walking on the Moon’s surface.
A latter part of Mr Aldrin’s response, not included in the Instagram clip, makes this slightly clearer. He says: “Money. It's a good thing. If you want to buy new things, new rockets, instead of keep doing the same thing over and over, then it's going to cost more money. And other things need more money too.
“So having achieved what the President wanted us to do, and then what thousands, millions of people in America, and millions of people around the world... You know when we toured around the world after we came back [from the Moon] the most fascinating observation was signs that said ‘we did it.’ Not just us. But we, the world. They felt like they were part of what we were able to do. And that made us feel very good.”
Since this interview in 2015, Mr Aldrin has given several interviews in which he clearly recounts his journey to the Moon. So a somewhat ambiguous line in one interview can’t be taken as evidence of Mr Aldrin admitting the Moon landings were faked.
There is also photographic evidence of Mr Aldrin on the Moon, as well as video footage.
Image courtesy of NASA
Correction 24 April 2023
This article has been updated to amend our reference to the amount of photographs and video footage gathered during Mr Aldrin’s time on the Moon’s surface.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as missing context because Mr Aldrin appears to explain why astronauts haven’t returned to the Moon in decades, not that they never went at all, and in other interviews since Mr Aldrin has clearly claimed he went to the Moon.
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