Moon Landings - Fact or Fiction? Quiz

Answer: Flutter in the lunar wind

Sceptics have pointed to the fact that the flag appears to flutter in a lunar wind, when there is actually no wind on the moon. The explanation is that the flag itself is wired so that it is fully extended, and the flutter effect was caused as these wires tightened as the flag was erected.

Answer: Multiple shadows

The sceptics say that the multiple shadows cast by the astronauts and their equipment point to there being multiple light sources, as would be found if big film studio lights were used. The explanation is that the photographs were taken in a brightly lit landscape with the sun low on the horizon and the contours of the ground produced the multiple shadows effect, much as you would get if you photographed someone on an uneven snow field.

Answer: Stars are too dim to show up in photographs

Go outside and take a picture of the night sky and you may get a picture of the moon, but you won't see any stars. Although they can seem very bright when looking at the sky, especially on a cold, clear night, they give out insufficient light to show up on a photograph, especially when the sky is only the background.

Answer: There is no blast crater

The sceptics say that as the lunar lander came in the rockets should have created a blast or impact crater beneath it. This would be true if it came in at top speed, but, like parking a car, as it came nearer and nearer to the surface it slowed down so by the time touch-down was achieved it merely blew up a dust cloud.

Answer: Moisture

Lack of moisture does not mean you cannot leave footprints. Take some talcum powder or flour and just drop it onto a dry hard surface so that it spreads out and then walk through it and you will leave footprints. The particles hold their position due to the friction between them.

Answer: It was too big to fit into the landing module

The rover was a very clever piece of equipment. It was made of extremely lightweight materials and was designed so that it folded up into something around the size of a large suitcase.

Answer: In the sun the temperature is so high the film would melt

In the sun the temperature of the moon reaches 280 degrees Fahrenheit, but no film was exposed to this heat. Everything was inside protective canisters, and all the Apollo landings took place at either dawn or dusk when the temperature was lower.

Answer: Van Allen Belts

The Van Allen Belts protect Earth from solar radiation by collecting it and trapping it in a layer surrounding the Earth. You would have to hover in this area for hours, possibly even days, before you had sufficient radiation exposure to do any harm. The lunar mission passed through these Belts in around 4 hours and had roughly the same radiation exposure as from an X-Ray.

Answer: Punctured the ship and killed the astronauts

The sceptics claim that super-fast micro meteors would have punctured the ship and killed the astronauts. It is true that there are a lot of large and small pieces of rock and other debris floating around in space, but space is massive, and the density of these objects is very low, so the chances of anything potentially damaging hitting the ship are very very low.

Answer: It appears to have been filmed from the moon's surface

The take off of the lunar lander on its return to the main ship was filmed from the surface of the moon, but this was achieved by a NASA Technician operating a remote control camera left on the surface. No-one was left behind to do the filming and this does not prove that the whole thing took place in a film studio.