NASA did not fake footage from the International Space Station

An Instagram post claimed that NASA used "Hollywood techniques" and other deceptions to fake video of astronauts on the International Space Station.

"NASA was all a lie! History has to be rewritten!" said text over a video, which detailed the claim.

The post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

This is another in a series of false claims about the existence of the space station.

The post includes excerpts from comments that a resident of Orlando, Florida, made during the public comments part of the April 4, 2023, meeting of the Brevard County Commission. 

NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida is in Brevard County.

The man, who according to the Miami Herald, has described himself as a flat-earther, asked the commission to investigate NASA. He claimed that the federal space agency used methods such as underwater simulations, "green screens and virtual reality" to "grossly mislead the public about astronauts being on the International Space Station … If they’re really up there, why are they using Hollywood techniques to fake the footage?" 

NASA spokesperson Sandra Jones told PolitiFact that 269 people from 21 countries have visited the space station and that it has been continuously crewed since 2000.

"At no time have props, green screen, wires or simulated underwater facilities substituted for actual real-time operation on the space station," she said.

Jones also rebutted some parts of the claim, pointing to NASA reviews of two incidents of moisture and water entering the helmets of space station astronauts. 

Featured Fact-check

Facebook posts

stated on November 13, 2024 in a Facebook post

“Elon Musk permanently bans Robert De Niro from X, declares ‘no room for his woke presence.’”

Water in the 2022 incident resulted from "several variables" that led to condensation, the review found, including human exertion and the crew cooling settings. Mechanical failure caused a 2013 incident. 

The reviews led to changes in procedures to avoid future incidents. 

Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist with the Center for Astrophysics at Harvard University, told The Associated Press that video from the International Space Station "is clearly legit and to suggest it’s faked is just silly and ignorant."

We’ve seen claims like this before.

We rated a claim that there are no humans on the International Space Station False. We also rated False a statement that the station is only a television studio on Earth. False, too, was a claim that video of a NASA astronaut on the space station was recorded in front of a green screen. 

The faked footage claim gets the same rating: False.

Correction, June 23, 2023:  The International Space Station has been crewed since 2000. A bullet point in the "If you're short on time" section had the wrong year in an earlier version of this fact-check.