One big…lie? As Kim Kardashian claims the moon landing was FAKE, experts reveal the three key pieces of evidence that prove NASA's Apollo 11 mission was real

Kim Kardashian made the baffling admission this week that she believes the 1969 moon landings were an elaborate hoax.

Explaining why she had bought into the conspiracy theory, the reality TV star said: 'There's no gravity on the moon – why is the flag blowing?

'The shoes that they have in the museum that they wore on the moon [have] a different [foot]print than the photos. Why are there no stars?'

Unfortunately for Kim, there are three key pieces of evidence that prove NASA's Apollo 11 mission was real.

Speaking to the Daily Mail, scientists say we simply have to look at the scientific equipment astronauts left behind, the 380 kilograms of rock they brought back, and the 8,400 publicly available photos they took while they were there.

Dr Greg Brown, astronomer at the Royal Observatory Greenwich, told the Daily Mail: 'From the Second World War onwards, rocket technology existed that was at least theoretically capable of getting to the Moon. 

'But the technology to fake it did not.

'As strange as it sounds, the easiest way to fake the Moon landings would have been to film them on location.'

1. Equipment on the moon

When the Apollo 11 mission landed on the moon in 1969, the astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin did not leave the lunar surface as they found it.

Every NASA mission to the lunar surface has left behind a trail of abandoned landers, rovers and various pieces of scientific equipment.

Although these are difficult to see from Earth, more recent missions have confirmed that they are still there.

In 2011, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter mapped the moon in the highest resolution ever, creating hundreds of terabytes of images.

The orbiter has photographed three Apollo landing sites – Apollo 12, 14, and 17 – with an unprecedented level of accuracy.

In the photos of the Apollo 12 landing site, you can even see the astronauts' footprints, which have been perfectly preserved in the wind–less lunar surface for decades.

Dr Brown says: 'This imagery has been independently verified by institutions across the world, and not just by NASA and the USA.

If that wasn't convincing enough, you could look at the data from the pieces of scientific equipment astronauts installed.

Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, and 16 all installed lunar seismometers to measure how impacts from asteroids travelled through the lunar rock.

This data was key in developing our understanding of the moon's composition and formation.

But, most importantly, Apollo 11 installed a piece of equipment called the lunar laser ranging retroreflector array, which is essentially a large mirror.

'These are still used today to determine the precise distance to the Moon by bouncing laser light off of them and timing the beam's return,' says Dr Brown.

'It is these measurements that revealed that the Moon is moving very slowly away from the Earth at around the rate your fingernails grow!'

2. Lunar rocks

Besides leaving things behind, NASA astronauts also took plenty of souvenirs home with them when they returned from the moon.

In total, across all the Apollo missions, NASA has brought back 382 kilograms of lunar rock and debris.

These rocks have been distributed to laboratories all around the world for analysis, including to labs in Russia and China, which would have loved to prove the landings were a hoax.

Dr Brown says: 'That analysis has shown that the moon's composition, while similar to the Earth in some ways, has some key differences.'

The lunar rocks contain a different combination of minerals and isotopes from those found on Earth, proving their extraterrestrial origins.

Scientists are also able to compare these samples to so–called lunar meteorites, pieces of rock that have fallen to Earth after being dislodged from the moon.

Today, these samples can even be compared to lunar rocks collected by China's Chang'e–5 and Chang'e–6 missions.

At no point in the five decades these rocks have been available for study has anyone found evidence that they didn't come from the moon.

Additionally, the lunar samples brought back by NASA form the basis of our scientific knowledge about the moon.

The fact that the moon has similar, but slightly different, rocks to Earth suggests that they might have a common origin.

'This has lent support to the theory that the Moon likely formed from a collision between the early Earth and a Mars–sized object while the Earth was still mostly molten,' says Dr Brown.

3. It would have been nearly impossible to fake

Perhaps one of the strongest pieces of evidence that the moon landings really happened is just how hard they would have been to fake.

Dr Brown says: 'In a world of AI imagery and special effects, it is sometimes easy to forget that up until very recently, producing convincing footage of people in space was just not possible.'

There are over 8,000 photos, thousands of hours of video footage, and endless recordings of air–to–ground conversations taken during the moon landing that are all available to the public.

However, at no point has anyone found serious proof of tampering or that the photos were not taken on the lunar surface.

'On top of that, the Space Race was just that, a competition between the USA and the USSR,' says Dr Brown.

'While the USSR managed many of the firsts, they have never disputed that ultimately the USA landed on the Moon first, a remarkable agreement considering the politics of the time.'

At the same time, each of the missions was carefully tracked by observers from multiple nations using radio signals and no foul play was detected.

In fact, tracking the moon missions was so easy that a group of students at Kettering Grammar School successfully monitored Soviet and US missions using only basic radio equipment.

The Apollo missions themselves required a vast number of people to be involved, ranging from scientists to janitors and security guards.

At the very low end, this means tens of thousands of people were in on the conspiracy, and yet no credible evidence of fakery has ever emerged.

Likewise, none of the supposed arguments that the landings were fake, including those shared by Kim Kardashian, hold up to any scrutiny.

For example, Kim complains that you cannot see the stars in photos of the lunar landing.

However, rather than being an enormous blunder in an otherwise flawless conspiracy, this is simply a feature of how cameras work.

'Cameras work broadly like our own eyes, capable of seeing bright things and faint things but not equally well at the same time,' says Dr Brown.

On the Moon during daytime, the surface is experiencing light just as bright as a sunny day on Earth, even though the sky looks black because there is no atmosphere.

That means a camera cannot take clear pictures that show both the brightly lit astronauts and the faint stars.

Dr Brown says: 'If you want to try a test for yourself, go out at night, stand in a bright light and try and get your camera to take a clear image of you while also showing the stars in the background. 

'While not completely impossible, it's very tough to do without a lot of work.'