Steph Curry Moon Landing Was Fake Comments Were 'Joke,' Says He'll Visit NASA

Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry said he was joking when he made comments questioning whether astronauts ever landed on the moon and plans to accept NASA's invitation to tour the lunar lab at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.

"One thousand percent," Curry told ESPN on Wednesday of accepting the invite. "One thousand percent. Obviously I was joking when I was talking on the podcast. [Then] I was silently protesting how stupid it was that people actually took that quote and made it law as, 'Oh my God, he's a fake-moon-landing truther,' whatever you want to call it, yada, yada, yada. So I was silently protesting that part about it, how the story took a life of its own.

"But in terms of the reaction that I've gotten, I am definitely going to take [NASA] up on their offer. I am going to educate myself firsthand on everything that NASA has done and shine a light on their tremendous work over the years. And hopefully people understand that education is power, informing yourself is power. For kids out there that hang on every word that we say, which is important, understand that you should not believe something just because somebody says it. You should do your homework and understand what you actually believe.

"But I'm going to go to NASA and I'm going to enjoy the experience wholeheartedly."

NASA offered Curry the chance to see evidence of the U.S. moon landings after the former NBA MVP expressed doubts during a podcast appearance.

"We'd love for Mr. Curry to tour the lunar lab at our Johnson Space Center in Houston, perhaps the next time the Warriors are in town to play the Rockets," Allard Beutel, a NASA spokesman, told The New York Times on Monday.

"We have hundreds of pounds of moon rocks stored there, and the Apollo mission control. During his visit, he can see firsthand what we did 50 years ago, as well as what we're doing now to go back to the moon in the coming years, but this time to stay."

Around the 46-minute mark of his appearance on The Ringer's "Winging It" podcast with teammate Andre Iguodala and hosts Vince Carter and Kent Bazemore, the former NBA MVP proclaims that the moon landing never happened.

"They're gonna come get us," Curry said in agreement with the chorus of doubters. "I don't think so either."

Co-host Annie Finberg allowed Curry to retract his statement, asking, "You don't think so?"

"Nuh uh," he says.

"You gotta do the research on Stanley Kubrick," Bazemore adds, reference a common argument used by moon landing doubters.

According to this theory, NASA was desperate to make it to the moon, so it hired Kubrick, a famous director, to stage the Apollo 11 and 12 missions, although there is no evidence of this being true.

It's also countered by numerous examples of proof, including the fact that there are visible footprints left by astronauts on the surface of the moon.

Curry isn't the first person to question the moon landing, as it's one of the most discussed conspiracies in American popular culture and research on the topic proves that there is actual belief in the conspiracy theories doubting it took place.

Per a Washington Post story from earlier this year:

"Assigning meaning to what happens has helped humans to thrive as a species, and conspiracy theories are internally cohesive stories that 'help us to understand the unknown whenever things happen that are fearful or unexpected,' said Jan-Willem van Prooijen, a social psychologist at Vrije University in Amsterdam. For some believers, the sense of comfort and clarity such stories bring can override the question of their truth value."

One moon dunker famously told Buzz Aldrin that he'd participated in a hoax, to which the former astronaut responded by punching him.