Fake It 'Til You Make It: Vladimir Putin’s Space Force Chief Says U.S. Staged Famous Moon Landing

A former Russian government leader is buying into one of the oldest U.S. conspiracy theories. He suspects the Apollo trips to the moon never happened.

Dmitry Rogozin, a former deputy prime minister, says he's asked the Russian space program for "documentary evidence of the Americans' stay on the Moon," as Knewz.com reported.

So far, Rogozin says all he's been given is a book with hearsay comments from a cosmonaut, who was told about the lunar landing from U.S. astronauts.

Rogozin, who directed the Roscosmos space agency until last year, wrote on Telegram that he's simply been trying to find the truth for 10 years.

“I did not undermine or aggravate anything,” he wrote in a post reviewed by Britain's Daily Star.

Before he was transferred to Russian military duty last summer, Rogozin threatened to have the International Space Station crash-land on the U.S.

Some people in the U.S. have been suspicious of the lunar landings as well.

A video which made social media rounds last summer discussed the “so-called moon hoax.” But a review by USA Today found purported clips from a studio in Arizona actually came from the set of a recent Ryan Gosling movie.

Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin, who walked on the moon with Neil Armstrong in 1969, punched a skeptic in the face who called him “a coward and a liar” in 2002.

The 1978 movie “Capricorn One” was built around such conspiracy theories. The plot of that film involved a failed mission to Mars.

But in fact, NASA insists the Apollo astronauts left behind a way to prove the trips happened.

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Reflector panels allow laser beams to regularly measure the distance between Earth and the moon. Soviet robot launchers left two of their own on the moon during the Apollo era of the 1970s.

Besides, Ars Technica says the Soviets had their own Luna 15 satellite in orbit around the moon when Apollo 11 landed in 1969.