NASA has offered Stephen Curry the chance to see evidence that the U.S. moon landings were not staged, after the Golden State Warriors star expressed doubts that they ever happened.
"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.
Read more: Former MVP Stephen Curry doubts astronauts walked on moon
"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."
The response came shortly after the three-time NBA champion had claimed a moon landing was yet to occur.
Curry made the comments on The Ringer 's "Winging It" podcast with teammate Andre Iguodala and hosts Vince Carter and Kent Bazemore .
"We ever been to the moon?" Curry asked at one point during the show.
"They're gonna come get us," Curry said, agreeing with a chorus of doubters. "I don't think so either. Sorry, I don't want to start conspiracies."
However, when asked by co-host Annie Finberg to expand on his views, Curry said he did not believe the U.S. had successfully landed a man on the moon.
Curry isn't the first person to question the moon landing, as it's one of the most discussed conspiracy theories in American popular culture .
One of the most frequent arguments made by moon landing doubters suggests that NASA was desperate to make it to the moon, so it hired Stanley Kubrick to stage the Apollo 11 and 12 missions.
But there is no evidence that this is true, and there is no proof that one of Hollywood's most celebrated directors ever lent his services to the agency.
The theory is also countered by numerous examples of proof, including the fact that there are visible footprints left by astronauts on the surface of the moon.
The U.S. Apollo 11 performed the first crewed moon landing on July 20, 1969. NASA landed a total of 12 astronauts on the lunar surface as part of six missions between 1969 and 1972.
A number of Russian officials have questioned the veracity of the lunar landings, and in November Russia's space agency unveiled plans to send a mission to the moon to check whether the American moon landings were real.
In a video posted to Twitter, Dmitry Rogozin, the director general of Roscosmos, said: "We have set this objective to fly and verify whether they've been there or not."
Rogozin announced the project after he was asked whether he believed NASA landed on the moon in 1969.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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Dan Cancian is currently a reporter for Newsweek based in London, England. Prior to joining Newsweek in January 2018, he ... Read more
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