In a 2000 appearance on the Conan O’Brien Show, Aldrin stunned the audience when the host recalled watching the moon landing as a boy.
‘No, you didn’t,’ Aldrin snapped. ‘There wasn’t any television, there wasn’t anyone taking a picture. You watched an animation.’
The awkward exchange left O’Brien speechless and has since racked up millions of views online.
Then, in 2015, an eight-year-old girl asked the former astronaut why no one has returned to the moon. Aldrin replied: ‘Because we didn’t go there, and that’s the way it happened.’
NASA has never wavered in its stance that the Apollo 11 mission was real, backed by telemetry data, moon rocks, and the testimony of thousands of engineers and scientists.
The Apollo 11 mission launched at 9:32am ET on July 16, 1969, from Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
On board were Commander Neil Armstrong, 38, Lunar Module Pilot Aldrin, 39, and Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, 38, who remained in orbit while the other two landed.
At 4:17pm ET on July 20, Armstrong and Aldrin touched down on the lunar surface in the Eagle lander, and a short time later, Armstrong stepped outside and delivered his now-famous line: ‘That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.’
The moment was broadcast around the world and watched by an estimated 600 million people, though skeptics have long questioned how much of what viewers saw was authentic.
Doubt over the moon landing took root in the mid-1970s, fueled by public mistrust after Watergate and the Pentagon Papers. Theories about staged sets, lighting inconsistencies, and suspicious interviews have persisted ever since.
NASA has repeatedly dismissed such claims, pointing to telemetry data, lunar rock samples, and the testimonies of thousands of engineers, scientists, and astronauts as proof of the mission’s authenticity.
But nearly six decades later, and with Aldrin’s own words now making the rounds again, one of America’s oldest conspiracy theories refuses to die.
The interview with Conan O’Brien sent conspiracy theorists into a frenzy as they believed Aldrin discussing parts of the moon landing broadcasts being animated was proof that it was all faked.
‘You watched animation so you associated what you saw with… you heard me talking about, you know, how many feet we’re going to the left and right and then I said contact light, engine stopped, a few other things and then Neil said ‘Houston, tranquility base,’ Aldrin told O’Brien.
‘The Eagle has landed.’ How about that? Not a bad line.’
However, he was referring to animations used by broadcasters at the time in their coverage of the moon landing, intercut with real footage.
A more recent clip showed Aldrin at the 2015 National Book Festival, where a young girl interviews him about space.
When asked why nobody has ‘been to the moon in such a long time,’ he responds, ‘because we didn’t go there, and that’s the way it happened.’
The clip, widely shared on social media, cuts off before Aldrin clarifies that funding and shifting government priorities ended lunar missions.
He later explains: ‘We need to know why something stopped in the past if we want it to keep going.
‘It’s a matter of resources and money, new missions need new equipment.’