Russian chief investigative authorities call for international inquiry into Moon landing

Russia’s federal Investigative Committee representative Vladimir Markin called for an international investigation into the Moon landing. According to Markin, the investigation should reveal where the films of the Moon went, and where the 400 kilograms of Moon rock samples are currently stored.

Markin made these suggestions in his op-ed piece about FIFA corruption, published in the Russian newspaper Izvestia. According to Markin, American prosecutors “have decided to proclaim themselves ultimate arbitrators” in the sphere of soccer. He claimed that it would only be right to continue down the road paved by the FIFA investigation by looking into the putsch in Kiev, into war crimes in the east of Ukraine, into weapons transfers to the Islamic State, and into the Moon landing. According to Markin, after such investigations, “American ambassadors might stop dictating to international leaders and even to the Pope what they should be doing about Russia.”

Markin’s statements about the films most likely refer to shots made by several cameras, some of which had been backups in the event that the initial cameras failed. In the early 2000s, it was reported that some of the extra cameras had filmed the landing in higher quality than the films that were revealed to the public, but the whereabouts of the other films have not been disclosed. The Moon rock Markin mentioned was brought back to Earth between 1969 and 1972, and most of it is stored in the Lyndon Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Some of the rock samples are also on display in museums all over the world, and used in labs in different countries. The Houston repository continues to send out Moon rock samples to scientists for research purposes each year.

“No, we are not saying they never flew up there and just filmed a movie instead. But all these scientific, or perhaps even cultural artifacts are part of an international human heritage, and their disappearance is a great loss for all of us. An investigation would reveal [what happened and where they are].”