Much like with the 1969 moon landing, conspiracy theorists are claiming the NASA Artemis II mission to the moon is a hoax. They also claim they have evidence to prove it. But they don’t.
Conspiracy theory number one about the Artemis II mission
One of the easier-to-understand conspiracy theories claiming the Artemis II moon mission is fake comes from a lack of understanding of how things work in space. It began with a simple post on social media questioning why the far side of the moon isn’t completely dark.
The answer, of course, is that it is never dark. Sorry, Pink Floyd fans.
As IFL Science explains, the far side of the moon, “despite sometimes being called dark, receives about the same amount of sunlight as the near side.”
“During the six-hour lunar science observation period, the Sun, Moon, and the Orion spacecraft will be aligned such that the crew will see about 20% of the Moon’s far side, the hemisphere not visible from Earth, lit by the Sun,” NASA also explained. “Visible far-side features will include several never before seen with unaided eyes, such as the full Orientale basin, Pierazzo crater, and Ohm crater.”
Conspiracy theory number two about the Artemis II mission
Another conspiracy theory making the rounds about NASA’s Artemis II mission to the moon is that the whole thing is staged using green screens.
That theory comes from an interview the astronauts gave to CNN from space. During the interview, a plush toy can be seen floating around because the astronauts were in zero gravity. That was all it took.
The conspiracy theorists claim that, because of the footage’s glitchiness, it was staged. “Green screen studio glitching on the Artemis moon mission …. It’s all fake!?” one X user wrote.
“Pure green screen bull s—,” read another comment on X. “Same exact fabric they use on movie sets. Artemis? Fake as hell. They never went up there. Whole thing’s a staged circus and we’re the idiots paying for it. Truth’s buried under layers of CGI and lies. Wake up, man.”
However, according to both IFL Science and the New York Post, the glitches were likely caused by the clip being recorded from a TV display with chromakey overlay processing active. This is commonly done in order to overlay text, captions or graphics. The original NASA and CNN footage does not show the same color distortions or the flickering letters.