Have you ever seen this famous astronaut on the Moon? Be honest…
I hope your answer was ‘no’ because apparently, there aren’t many!
A little rumor began swirling around the internet a while ago that there are no images of Neil Armstrong on the moon from his historic journey in 1969, which is crazy… but listen to what they say.
They think that there are no photos because they either believe that the landing was faked, or they’ve just not been able to recognise the astronaut in his space suit and helmet.
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Because rest assured, there’s actually two photos on record of Armstrong on the moon, and it was taken by fellow astronaut Buzz Aldrin.
There’s also a hell of a lot of footage showing the pair hopping about on the planet’s surface.
In one, Armstrong - who is the first human being to ever set foot on the moon's surface - is seen raising the US flag with Aldrin, and another of his face.
But one reason that there might not be too much photographic evidence of their mission is because they didn’t live in a world controlled by social media and ‘pics or it didn’t happen’ mentalities.
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However, Reddit came through to provide evidence to the naysayers and was swift in debunking the myth that an astonishing amount of people believe.
User @Appropriate-Square67 poised the subject to r/nasa subreddit with the question: “I recently read thru the book Of a Fire on the Moon.
“I came across a note that there is basically no picture of Neil Armstrong on the moon besides the video footage where he climbs out of the lander.
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"I’m seriously interested in this fact because the author also mentioned what this must say about a human who is the first one on the moon but wouldn’t have taken a picture of himself in this situation.
“I also thought about the possibility to just hand over the camera to Buzz Aldrin. Would had been Neil Armstrong able to just give the camera to him?
"Maybe it was kinda mounted to his suit? (In this case he wouldn’t have been able to pass the camera to Aldrin) But yeah I’m deeply impressed of Neil Armstrong's selfless personality.”
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Well, ask and you shall receive.
It wasn’t long before the NASA history buffs were out in full force with pictures to prove it.
One person saved the day with a brief history lesson about the astronauts, as well as the two pictures in question.
They said: “There are actually two still pictures of Armstrong on the moon. Here's one, with Armstrong's back to the camera.
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"This is the second one: That's Armstrong taking the picture of Buzz Aldrin that you can see in the reflection of Aldrin's visor.
“If you do a web search you'll find a bunch of articles about why this happened. From what I've read, the primary reason was that it simply wasn't considered important.
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“Taking a selfie (or having Aldrin take a picture) wasn't something that was listed on their checklist of work to accomplish, and there was very little spare time to do anything that wasn't on that checklist.”
It also turns out that Armstrong was the one holding the camera for the majority of the journey, meaning he wasn't the one in the frame.
Amen to that!
Britt Jones