As Dokoupil and fellow CBS Mornings personalities Nate Burleson and real-life space traveler Gayle King discussed Kim Kardashian 's headline-making claim on Thursday's episode of The Kardashians that Aldrin's 1969 moon landing was "fake," the TV journalist mistakenly asserted that the 95-year-old space explorer was dead.

The acting administrator of NASA, Sean Duffy, reaffirmed Thursday that the 1969 landing of U.S. astronauts on the moon did, in fact, take place.

Mr Aldrin, now 95 and the last surviving member of the Apollo 11 crew, has spent much of his career fending off accusations that the Moon landings were not real.