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Apollo 11: Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin visited nuclear test site before historic mission

WikiImages / Pixabay

The Space Race ended in 1969 when astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin set foot on the surface of the moon. As part of their preparation for the upcoming mission, Armstrong and Aldrin visited a nuclear test site.

Scientist Derek Muller explained why the two astronauts went into a nuclear test site prior to their mission in his Youtube channel Veritasium. Dr. Muller explained that Armstrong and Aldrin went to the Sedan crater which was part of the Nevada test site where nuclear tests were performed for years from 1951 to 1963 when the nuclear ban was signed. By 1965, the crater was where Apollo astronauts were now trained, with the next few years seeing the astronauts come in with spacesuits and cameras. Mock-ups of lunar rovers were also being tested at the crater.

As to why officials blew up an underground nuclear bomb at the test site, Dr. Muller revealed that since the moon has a lot of craters, the astronauts had to be experienced in walking through similar terrain before being sent into orbit.

“As you can see, it was a pretty good excavator, but later they found out that it’s very hard to reduce the contamination that results and so the operation was canceled,” said Dr. Muller.

Previously, in a 2011 interview, Armstrong addressed the long-running conspiracy theory that the moon landing was faked. Speaking to Alex Malley, the CEO of the Certified Practicing Accountants Organization, Armstrong shared what would be the conclusive evidence that proves the moon landing was not faked as conspiracy theorists believe. “...People love conspiracy theories, I mean they are very attractive. But it was never a concern to me because I know that one day somebody is going to go fly back up there and pick up a camera that I left. So they will be sure then,” said the late astronaut.

To further drive the point further, Armstrong was shown side-by-side comparison footage of his moon landing as well as Google mapping through Google Moon. The footage provided strong proof, showing a perfect comparison. “This, side by side, not only that, every crater, the flag, there’s been no property development we’ve decided when we looked at the footage,” said Mr. Malley.

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