Coke Bottle on the Moon: A NASA Photo Anomaly

The original "Coke bottle on the Moon" story comes from a woman named under the pseudonym "Una Ronald." Miss Ronald claims that she saw footage of the Moon landing (possibly tape-delayed) late at night in Australia. For a period of three seconds, Ronald is absolutely sure that she saw the Astronauts kick a bottle of Coke across the screen accidentally (during the scene where Buzz is demonstrating his Moonwalk). For whatever reason, this Coke bottle never appeared in the film footage ever again.

Moon hoax theorists and anti-hoax theorists have poured over any evidence surrounding the Coke bottle. Though miss Ronald herself remains utterly mysterious, she claims that letters were written to a local newspaper in support of the Coke bottle theory. Real evidence of these claims, and Miss Ronald's story, has yet to surface.

A mind-numbing conversation about the satellite feeds and paths of television signals on Earth has ensued. Some claim that miss Ronald could have seen an early version of the Moon broadcast, while others say that this was impossible because of the path that the signal took. This argument seems pointless. Nobody should have ever been curious about how the Moon landing footage of Apollo 11 was routed around the world - at least, before Una Ronald's story. It seems likely that, in the event of such a discovery, a misinformation campaign could have been introduced to make Ronald's story more unbelievable. This website claims that the CIA might have been involved in a Moon hoax cover up, and misinformation was (and still is) a standard CIA practice. It's hard to prove or disprove anything when you can't even get the facts straight.

One thing remains - the photographs of the Apollo 11 mission. Moon hoax theorists believe they have found proof of the Coke bottle claims within the photographs. The following photo is a scene with Neil and Buzz planting the flag - but we are not interested in the flag planting at the moment. Notice the circled portion - it seems as though someone has tried to disguise a coke bottle as part of the Lunar landscape. This part of the photograph looks very strange. It doesn't look like a rock, yet it casts a shadow. Do take a good look. Notice how the top of the shadow looks strikingly like that of a glass Coke bottle.

 

So, why would there be a Coke bottle in the pictures? If a film crew had staged the Moon hoax, shouldn't the crew have seen this bottle and removed it? Maybe. You have to remember, they took a lot of photographs. The photographers were expecting the film editors to examine these prints and remove any anomalies (such as weeds, lizards, Coke bottles, and anything else that you find in the desert). In the end, maybe they just didn't do a good enough job.

Whether or not you believe in the hoax, you have to admit, that section of photo above really does look like a Coke bottle. The presence of such a bottle makes Una Ronald's fantastic story much more plausible. She supposedly saw the bottle in the film footage, which was televised "live" around the world. The photo above was taken from NASA's photo archives of the mission, which weren't made available to the public until long after the Apollo 11 Astronauts had returned home from their voyage.