The theory that man never walked on the Moon during the Apollo mission is not new. Today, it is Thomas Pesquet who blames himself for having been the victim of this fabrication. This Sunday, August 28, the French astronaut gave an interview to France 2 in which he returned to the launch of the Orion capsule. Unfortunately, his words were hijacked in a video.
“When I look at the Moon at night, it still gives me a little shiver, because it’s not the same thing to say ‘is it humanly possible to go there?’. The Moon, you have to see that there is a factor of 1,000. It is 1,000 times further than the Space Station. There is yet another dimension in space travel”, said Thomas Pesquet before continuing with the famous passage that will be distorted in the video editing. “We are really going to go very far, very far, very far, as far as no human being has ever gone from Earth.” Words which, out of context, made it possible to relaunch the crazy conspiracy theory. The video was widely shared on social networks, which annoyed the main interested party.
In fact, Thomas Pesquet said nothing false. According to NASA, the trajectory that the manned Orion capsule will follow will take it 65,000 kilometers beyond the Moon, which is much further than the Apollo missions, which were 300 kilometers from the Moon. From then on, the astronaut wanted to put the dots on the I’s on Twitter. In a series of twelve messages, he expressed his disappointment and annoyance. “But why do we have to waste precious time with this once once more: of course yes, humans went to the moon during the Apollo missions. And we’re going back there (…) And yes, no matter my emotions but it pains me, following all that I have done for 10 years, my two missions, the thousands of extra hours of work to share them and explain science and technology, to have to do this tweet today”, can we read among other things.