Pei announced during a broadcast that their team did not find any evidence from the Apollo basin on the far side of the moon during their recent mission. However, it seemed like the host quickly changed the topic when Pei appeared to be struggling with organizing their thoughts. The Apollo basin is a large impact crater in the southern hemisphere of the lunar far side and one of the designated landing sites for Chang’e-6. While some online users mistakenly linked the basin’s name to NASA’s Apollo mission from over 50 years ago on the near side of the moon, they thought Pei was implying that no remains of that mission had been found.
As videos started circulating online with captions highlighting Pei’s broken sentence, many users began to believe that Americans never actually walked on the moon. However, these claims were dismissed by China Association for Science and Technology as groundless, attributing them to a surge of nationalism and patriotism. The Chinese Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Geology and Geophysics also joined in debunking these rumors, emphasizing critical thinking based on solid evidence.
An article reposted by the Institute provided detailed explanations of how evidence supports the Apollo 11 moonwalk, stressing that those who claim it was faked must provide multiple pieces of solid evidence to support their argument. The scientific literacy rate in China has been increasing steadily, with about 14 percent defined as scientifically literate in 2023 compared to just 3 percent in 2010 according to a survey by China Association for Science and Technology. Despite this progress, advanced economies still have an average scientific literacy rate above 20 percent.
