Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin deploy the U.S. flag on the Moon on July 20, 1969. (See text for a description of how this photo was taken.)
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Image courtesy of NASA

Is it really true that man never really walked on the Moon?

The picture of the American Flag (the one put there by the Apollo astronauts) is waving (or straight out) in the wind. How could that be possible if there is no atmosphere on the Moon? Was it some sort of optical illusion? If there were only three persons on that trip to the moon and one was Neil Armstrong, one was the other was standing beside him and third one was in the space shuttle then who took the photograph?

It is true - astronauts have really traveled to the Moon! The first astronauts to land and walk on the Moon were Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. On July 20, 1969, these Apollo 11 astronauts planted an American flag on the surface of the moon.

The flag looks like it is waving in the breeze. But, that's kind of fishy since there is no air and no wind on the Moon. Does this mean that the photo is a fake? Absolutely not!

The flag had a special bar sown into the top of it so it would stand out instead of hanging limp. When the flag was planted, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had a little trouble getting the bar to extend fully, and so it ended up being a little shorter than it should have been. As a result, the flag was bunched up a little bit and looked like it was actually "waving in the breeze."

In the Apollo 11 mission, two astronauts got to land on the Moon while one astronaut stayed in the command module orbiting the Moon (the Space Shuttle wasn't around yet). So, there was noone else around to take a picture of the two astronauts on the Moon. An automatic camera took their picture. The camera was mounted on the Lunar module which had brought Armstrong and Aldrin to the Moon.

Last modified August 1, 2001 by Jennifer Bergman.

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