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NASA wants your craziest space theories so it can debunk them

The agency plans to address hoaxes and conspiracies for a special Halloween video.

Amanda Kooser
Freelance writer Amanda C. Kooser covers gadgets and tech news with a twist for CNET. When not wallowing in weird gear and iPad apps for cats, she can be found tinkering with her 1956 DeSoto.
Amanda Kooser
2 min read
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The Apollo 16 mission launched in 1972 for a visit to the moon. 

NASA

The Earth is flat. The moon landings were hoaxes. Aliens walk among us. There's an ancient civilization on Mars. A surprising number of people believe these things to be true. NASA is planning to wade into the madness for a special Halloween episode of its #AskNASA video series.

The episode will take on space-related conspiracies and hoaxes, a plenty spooky subject for the Halloween season. 

NASA is probably very aware of the many wild ideas floating around out there, but it still put out a call on Thursday for ideas. "What secret plans do you think we've been cooking up over the years? Drop them below," NASA tweeted.  

The #AskNasa videos typically tackle more straightforward topics, like how a Mars rover is built or what it's like to live in space for a year. "Featuring a variety of agency experts, the series aims to answer frequently asked questions and debunk myths," NASA said when it first launched the series in 2019.

So far, the Twitter replies have covered lunar landing questions, UFO queries and rumors of a special hurricane-diverting device at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. 

There are also plenty of jokes in the comments, including the classic gag about NASA hiring film director Stanley Kubrick to fake the moon landing, but that he was such a perfectionist, he insisted on filming on location. 

Space fans can stay tuned for the next #AskNASA video to see which out-there ideas receive scrutiny from the experts. 

This would also be a good time to revisit Nvidia's moon-landing conspiracy debunking and ponder over SpaceX founder Elon Musk's thoughts on alien UFO visitations