Everyone has heard the conspiracy theories that claim that the space program isn’t real and that the tens of thousands of people involved in the program are all involved in some massive cover up.

In 2002, astronaut and moonwalker Buzz Aldrin even punched a man harassing him square in the jaw for continually bothering him with this nonsense. So you’ll forgive us if what we’re about to say sounds like something that would have us ducking from an astronaut fist.

No human has ever really left Earth’s atmosphere.

It sounds absolutely ridiculous when you first hear about it. After all, humans have walked on the surface of the moon. But by some calculations, no person has ever left the absolute limits of Earth’s atmosphere, and here’s why.

Basically, it all depends on how you are defining “atmosphere.”

As NASA heliophysics expert Doug Rowland explains here, “As you think of the atmosphere where we live and breathe here on Earth, it doesn’t just stop right above our heads. It doesn’t stop at Mount Everest. It doesn’t stop where the planes are flying. It goes on and on all the way up, and just gets less and less dense the higher you go. And it’s still there at a very high altitude.”

For orbiting satellites, the space station, and other manmade objects up there, it means they are still subject to a small amount of drag.

For the purposes of most scientists and space treaties, the atmosphere ends at “a delineation known as the Karman line, located 100 kilometers (62 miles) above Earth’s surface,” according to NASA. This is because 99.999975 of Earth’s atmosphere lies within this limit.

But that isn’t all of it, and studies have identified an extremely thin layer of atmosphere called the geocorona that may extend over 391 thousand miles outside the Earth, encompassing the orbit of the moon.

No, you can’t breathe up there. And yes, it’s still “outer space.” But, technically, there’s a tiny, tiny bit of Earth’s atmosphere up there.

Sorry, Buzz.

If you thought that was interesting, you might like to read about 50 amazing finds on Google Earth.