&Quot;Moon Landing&Quot;

Were the January 2025 Los Angeles wildfires intentionally set to implement "smart city" technology across Los Angeles? No, that's not true: While the cause of the wildfires had not been determined at the time of writing, the "smart city" effort to improve technology for municipalities does not include intentionally destroying them first. Los Angeles unveiled its plan to eventually add…

Did Universal Studios first introduce the concept of the world as a globe in 1927 before NASA had photographed it from space in the 1960s? No, that's not true on several counts: It did not take NASA's space program to discover that the Earth was round. Greek philosophers had already described the Earth as a sphere as early as the…

Did former astronaut Buzz Aldrin post on X, formerly known as Twitter, that the Apollo 11 mission, which allowed American astronauts to set foot on the moon for the first time, was "staged"? No, that's not true: Aldrin's official X account does not indicate that he ever made such a statement. Claims that Aldrin, who participated in the Apollo 11…

Does a meme on social media prove that footage of astronauts jumping on the surface of the moon must be fake because they come back down to approximately the same place? Wouldn't an astronaut who jumped up for one second come down many feet away from where he took off because the moon is rotating and has no atmosphere? No,…

Did Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp's legal staff notify Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger in late 2023 that 17,852 invalid 2020 votes were counted in Georgia's Fulton County? No, that's not true: The State Election Board told Lead Stories that Kemp's office forwarded a claim by one Georgia citizen to Raffensperger and to the state Election Board in 2022. Kemp's office…

Did India fake the landing of the Chandrayaan-3 lander module on the surface of the moon, and attempt to fool the world with an animation? No, that's not true: This image does show a simulation, but it was not presented in an effort to deceive the public. The Chandrayaan-3 lander module, named Vikram, did achieve a soft landing near the…

Does a rail gun's ability to "hit a target 100 miles away in a perfectly straight line" prove that the Earth is "missing curvature"? No, that's not true: Such claims are "absurd" and "completely nuts," two physicists told Lead Stories. That's because rail guns fire projectiles that are subject to the same laws of gravity as all other objects on…

Did NBC News report that NASA admitted to never going to space? No, that's not true: There is no evidence that NBC reported on this. And there is no evidence that NASA ever made such a statement. The audio heard in this TikTok originates with an account that regularly posts about conspiracy theories. The claim appeared on TikTok (archived here)…

Did astronaut Buzz Aldrin say the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing "didn't happen"? No, that's not true: The video clip in the post that makes this claim is misleading since it left out important context from one of Aldrin's quotes in a 2015 question-and-answer session. The claim appeared in a post on Instagram on June 11, 2023. The caption opened:…

Is livestreamed footage of the lunar module Challenger's 1972 takeoff from the moon fake since the technology did not exist at the time to livestream such an event? No, that's not true: NASA's chief historian confirmed to Lead Stories that the "footage is authentic to the Apollo 17 mission." As part of the Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s,…