There are no real pictures of satellites on Google Images because outer space is not real.
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A satellite image shows the Earth's western hemisphere on May 20, 2018. (AP)
Outer space is real, the Earth is round and many photographs prove it
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There are many photographs of real satellites and outer space on Google Images.
Flat-earth conspiracy theorists have long believed photos from space are fake. A Facebook video from the "Bradley Martyn Show" podcast amplified this claim.
In the Facebook video, Martyn says, "Do you know the one thing about flat earth that does trip me out? Google images of satellites. They’re all just like renders. I’ve never seen a satellite that was real."
Another man then says, "The sun and the moon is real, outer space is not."
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Featured Fact-check
A satellite is any object that orbits a planet or a star, meaning the Earth, moon and spacecraft are all considered satellites. A Google image search of satellites will yield some rendered images, or 3-D modeled realistic images of satellites. But there are also plenty of real photos of satellites.
For example, this image of the International Space Station was taken in 2001 by a space shuttle Discovery crew member. A camera on NASA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory satellite took these photographs in 2015 of the moon in front of the Earth.
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A man in the Facebook video also repeats the debunked theory that the Earth is flat and covered by a dome with the moon and sun. The first image of Earth from outer space was taken in 1946. Since then, there have been many more photos of a round Earth taken from outer space, proving that the Earth is not flat. We also know the Earth is a sphere because of the pull of gravity, different time zones and the Earth’s shadow on the moon.
And contrary to the video’s assertion that outer space isn’t real, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has shown that the universe contains at least two trillion galaxies.
We rate the claim that there are no real pictures of satellites on Google Images because outer space is not real Pants on Fire!
Our Sources
Facebook reel, archived, April 6, 2024
NASA Science, What Is a Satellite, accessed April 17, 2024
Smithsonian Magazine, Space Station Astronauts to Receive New Spacecraft After Coolant Leak, Jan. 13, 2023
CNET, These 10 space images look unbelievable, but are actually real (pictures), Feb. 2, 2016
CNN, The flat-Earth conspiracy is spreading around the globe. Does it hide a darker core?, Nov. 18, 2019
NASA, Looking at Earth: From 100 miles to 100 million miles, accessed April 18, 2024
NASA, 90 Years of Our Changing Views of Earth, Dec. 21, 2020
Business Insider, 7 of the most iconic photos of Earth taken from space, Dec. 11, 2022
NASA Earth Observatory, Earth from Afar, accessed April 18, 2024
Popular Science, 10 ways you can tell the Earth is round, May 1, 2023
NASA, Hubble Reveals Observable Universe Contains 10 Times More Galaxies Than Previously Thought, accessed April 18, 2024
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Outer space is real, the Earth is round and many photographs prove it
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