Russia jokes it's going to investigate whether the moon landings actually happened

Did the US really land a man on the moon? Russia's vowed to settle the debate once and for all.

Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russia's Roscosmos space agency, said in a video posted to his YouTube and Twitter pages on Saturday (NZ time) they are going to find out.

Mr Rogozin was talking to Moldova President Igor Dodon when he was asked about the popular conspiracy theory, which holds that NASA faked the 1969 moon landing to win the space race and ridicule the Soviet Union. 

"We have set this objective to fly and verify whether they've been there or not," said Mr Rogozin, with a smirk - suggesting he wasn't being serious.

"They say that they were, so we will check."

The Soviets gave up trying to reach the moon in the early 1970s. They didn't even admit they had a lunar programme until the late 1980s, after years of publicly denying it and claiming moon missions were pointless.

More than half of Russians believe the moon landings were faked according to a poll earlier this year, Russian news site Sputnik reports. Only around 7 percent of Americans think they were a hoax.

The first US moon landing took place in July 1969, and the last in 1972.

Russia has announced it'll be trying again in the 2030s.

Newshub.