The Artemis 2 astronauts on Capitol Hill on May 12, 2026. (Image credit: NASA/Aubrey Gemignani) Share this article 0 Join the conversation Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Subscribe to our newsletter The Artemis generation has to deal with conspiracy theorists, too.
The four astronauts of NASA's Artemis 2 mission were accosted on Capitol Hill earlier this month by an aggressive man, who accused them of faking their moon mission.
A man at the Capitol accused the Artemis astronauts of lying about going to space pic.twitter.com/7mqBQEMpWKMay 20, 2026
It was reminiscent of Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin's encounter with the moon-landing denier Bart Sibrel in September 2002. Aldrin, who was 72 at the time, punched Sibrel in the face.
The Artemis 2 crew — NASA's Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover and Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen of the Canadian Space Agency — showed much more restraint.
They mostly ignored their accuser, though Glover did give him a slight wave and a smile. "Take care," the Artemis 2 pilot said as he walked away.
Artemis 2 launched on April 1, sending the quartet on a 10-day loop around the moon and back to Earth. It was the first crewed flight beyond Earth orbit since Apollo 17 put astronauts on the lunar surface in December 1972.
It takes some mental gymnastics to believe that this highly anticipated, incredibly well-documented mission was a hoax. NASA livestreamed the entire thing, from liftoff to splashdown, and thousands of people watched the launch in person on Florida's Space Coast.
Denying the reality of the Apollo moon missions is just as silly. Robotic moon orbiters have spotted the Apollo landing sites on the lunar surface. And, if you think that's all part of the same psy-op: Scientists still bounce lasers off reflectors that the Apollo astronauts implanted in the gray dirt, using the data to calculate the distance between Earth and the moon with incredible precision.
In addition, the United States' Cold War rival, the Soviet Union, was capable of tracking the Apollo spacecraft through the final frontier. If those craft didn't make it to the moon as advertised, the Soviets certainly would have called out the deception.
There's also the small matter of keeping the thousands of people involved in the Apollo "hoax" quiet — surely at least one of them would have blown the whistle to get a book or movie deal?
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Mike WallSpaceflight and Tech EditorMichael Wall is the Spaceflight and Tech Editor for Space.com and joined the team in 2010. He primarily covers human and robotic spaceflight, military space, and exoplanets, but has been known to dabble in the space art beat. His book about the search for alien life, "Out There," was published on Nov. 13, 2018. Before becoming a science writer, Michael worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor's degree from the University of Arizona, and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz. To find out what his latest project is, you can follow Michael on Twitter.
