Russian blogger crowdfunds lunar probe to investigate if Apollo moon landing actually happened

It's not just Americans who have crazy moon landing conspiracy theories — our space race pals over in Russia are skeptical, too. In fact, one blogger is so suspicious of the U.S. Apollo missions that he has managed to raise over a million rubles (about $16,000) in four days to crowdfund a "micro-probe" to take high-resolution photos of the moon — you know, just to make sure the whole "one giant leap for mankind" thing actually happened, Meduza reports.

The blogger in question, Vitaly Egorov, said the team still needs another half a million rubles to complete the probe's computer. That will only get him as far as having the physical probe, though — to send it into space, Egorov will likely need the help of investors, as well as a rocket for the probe to hitch a ride on. He's hoping it can tag along with a Russian, Indian, or Chinese moon project sometime in the next decade.

To be fair, it's not just the United States under scrutiny by Egorov and his supporters; the probe would also check out the locations of the unmanned Luna spacecraft landings and the Lunokhod rovers, both former Soviet programs. That being said, Russia has been squinting its eyes at the Apollo pictures for awhile: As Russian Investigative Commission spokesman Vladimir Markin wrote earlier this year for the newspaper Izvestia, "We are not contending that they did not fly [to the moon], and simply made a film about it. But all of these scientific — or perhaps cultural — artifacts are part of the legacy of humanity, and their disappearance without a trace is our common loss. An investigation will reveal what happened."

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

NASA has said that they erased the original tapes of the missions to save money. If you want to take a look at the surviving evidence yourself, NASA just put 8,400 high-resolution Apollo program photos on Flickr. Just remember — there's no wind on the moon.