It's 2025 yet photographs of the first moon landing sites are all it takes to get people crying it was fake

Photographs of the landing sites of Apollo 11 and Apollo 12 have resurfaced on X (formerly Twitter), and they’re causing quite the stir.

The photos were taken by India’s Space Research Organization moon orbiter, known as Chandrayaan 2, in 2021 and reposted on the X page ‘Curiosity’ – which has 1.1 million followers and posts about space exploration.

These images are considered by most to be – among many other different forms of evidence – irrefutable proof that we landed on the moon, as well as similar verified images from Nasa’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), and other space craft from China and Japan.

Despite this, many believe that not only were the moon landings a hoax, but that not a single human has ever set foot on the moon.

Apollo 11 was a spaceflight conducted by the USA and launched by NASA in July 1969 – with Neil A. Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Edwin E. (Buzz) Aldrin Jr.. It marked the first time in history that humans have walked on the moon’s surface.

12 people in total globally have set foot on the moon, all between 1969 and 1972, and all American men.

The first moon landing was watched by over 650 million people, and remains one of the most viewed events in history – and the most controversial.

An incredible number of people in the comment section of this post easily denied all evidence that humans have ever walked on the moon.

One user took it as far as to say the entire Apollo program needed disproving, “Look, this doesn't prove a goddamn thing for two reasons. First, images are so damn easy to manipulate, create, enhance with AI these days, you could make anything look real. Second, this could've been planted there at any fucking time - doesn't prove the Apollo space program did squat. And let's get this straight, we're not disproving a moon landing; we're disproving the entire goddamn Apollo space program!”

Here are a few more of my favorites:

• “I think it's likely that they faked some footage, but that certainly doesn't mean they didn't go. The question is, why didn't they go back?”
• “This might prove they got some stuff on the moon from the rocket we saw launch. People were not on board. 2025 and no human has stepped on the moon.”
• “Where are all the vehicle tracks and footprints? Surely the ground would be more displaced.”
• “Wow. Blurry pictures. Almost as good as the drone photos in New Jersey."

There will always be those who choose not to believe evidence or fact, and there will be anomalies and oddities in records; however, it's the sheer size and variety of the amount of the record that proves every claim of falsifying the moon landings to be fake.

Equally, it’s entirely improbable that if this was a hoax that Russia – who were in a space race with the US at the time of the Cold War – would have happily exposed it.

There are roughly 8,400 publicly available photos, thousands of hours of video footage, a huge amount of scientific data, and full transcripts and audio recordings of ground to air conversations.

The US also has 382 kilograms of Moon rock that Apollo astronauts brought back to Earth, and the Institute of Physics (IOP) points out that “these rocks have been independently verified as lunar by laboratories around the world, ruling out a US conspiracy.”

Calling it the “final nail in the coffin of the Moon hoax theories” the IOP also pointed out that 55 years ago the crew of Apollo 11 planted a lunar laser ranging retroreflector array on the surface of the moon.

“It’s still operational today, and allows us to reflect lasers off of it and measure the distance to the Moon down to the centimetre. We simply couldn’t do this if we hadn’t visited the Moon.”

Take a look at our guide to the best cameras for astrophotography, and the best star tracker mounts for astrophotography.