Moon Landing

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 authentic social media posts offer genuine concern over a missing teen named Kaniesa Perez? No, that's not true: The posts exploit a real missing teen story and falsely say that Kaniesa Perez went missing on the same day from Dover, Pennsylvania, and Albuquerque, New Mexico, among other locations more than a thousand miles apart. In reality, the teen went…

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…

Did a U.S. Marine Officer spend over 15 years on Mars in a secret space program? No, that's not true: A NASA spokesperson told Lead Stories that NASA has "not yet sent humans to Mars" and has a goal of "having astronauts walk on Mars by 2040." A Pentagon duty officer confirmed to Lead Stories that this claim is "100%…

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,…

Is it true that the Lunar Roving Vehicle could not have fit inside the Lunar Module on the Apollo 15 mission, meaning moon missions after that were faked, as a post on Instagram suggested? No, that's not true: The Apollo 15 mission was a 1971 space program that genuinely landed the Lunar Module on the moon with the Lunar Roving…

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…

Does this video show a real asteroid crashing into the moon, prompting an explosion following the collision? No, that's not true: Lead Stories determined through a reverse image search that the footage in question was first posted by a YouTube creator in February 2023 and was later shared by an account on Instagram that confirmed the clip was created using…

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…