Atlanta: In a testament to Kim Kardashian’s attention-grabbing power, the NASA chief felt compelled this week to set the record straight when the reality TV queen said she believed in a well-worn conspiracy theory that the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing was fake.
In a new episode of Hulu’s long-running family saga The Kardashiansthe star of the show said he thought astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s moon landing was fiction.
Kim Kardashian expressed doubts about the moon landings in a recent television episode.Credit: vision
What convinced her, she said during the segment, was a video she saw online of an interview with Aldrin. She said she interpreted his comments in that interview to mean that the moon landing never happened.
Since the 1970s, skeptics have floated the idea that the mission, seen live by tens of millions of people around the world, was actually staged.
That theory has waxed and waned over the years, but US Transportation Secretary and Acting NASA Administrator Sean Duffy wasted no time in shooting it down after Kardashian told her 4 million viewers that she was embracing the idea.
“Yes, @KimKardashian, we’ve been to the moon before… 6 times!” Duffy wrote on social media platform X on Thursday.
American astronaut Buzz Aldrin on the Moon in 1969. Fellow astronaut Neil Armstrong and the lunar module are reflected in his viewfinder.Credit: Neil Armstrong via Getty Images
In fact, he said, the United States was going to return to the Moon under the leadership of President Donald Trump. In 2026, the Artemis II mission is scheduled to send astronauts on a 10-day trip around the moon, before a planned lunar landing in 2027.
“We won the last space race and we will win this one too,” Duffy wrote.
