More than 55 years after man’s first steps on the Moon, the rumor that the event never took place continues to circulate. Internet users also regularly question the reality of the existence of the International Space Station (ISS), a place of collaboration between astronauts from different countries. At the beginning of January 2025, a video relayed on social networks was presented by certain Facebook and X users as alleged proof that images of the ISS were filmed in “studio“, on Earth, because we see a “technician“. This is false: the sequence in question is a humorous montage diverting from real images filmed on board the ISS.
“NASA forgot that one of its studio technicians was still in the background during a live broadcast from the International Space Station“, support Internet users (1, 2, 3) in comments on a video shared on Facebook at the beginning of January 2025.
This sequence of around fifteen seconds shows a group of astronauts in blue suits, and, on their left, in a corner of the set, a man with glasses, sitting, drinking coffee.
An unusual detail, supposed to prove, according to Internet users who share it (including in Japanese, English and Polish), that the broadcasts made from the international space station (ISS) are only stagings filmed in the studio, on Earth.
But this assertion is false: the video in question is a humorous montage produced by a Turkish Internet user, who superimposed his image on very real shots filmed aboard the ISS.
A humorous montage produced in 2019
A reverse search of images from the video brings up, among the occurrences displayed, an AFP video (archived link) from September 2019 entitled “Hazzaa Al Mansouri makes history as first Arab astronaut aboard the International Space Statione”.
We see the latter, as the first Emirati astronaut, entering the ISS alongside colleagues of other nationalities.
A keyword search based on these elements then allows you to find, on the NASA YouTube channel (for “National Aeronautics and Space Administration“, the American space agency), the full video (archived link) from which the decontextualized extract is taken today.
We can read that these images were filmed on September 25, 2019 during the arrival of this crew, Expedition 61, at the end of a six-hour journey from Kazakhstan, aboard the ISS.
We find, from 4:55, the sequence of a few seconds shared in a roundabout way on social networks, but no man with glasses appears there.
On the other hand, we find, on the YouTube channel of Turkish videographer Uğur Ergün, a video from the end of November 2019 entitled “Are you an astronaut? You have a problem“, in which he places himself, by superimposing images, on these shots of the ISS – as well as on other sequences filmed on board the station.
If we also find, on his YouTube channel, a lot of content around space and the unfounded myth according to which the Earth is flat, Uğur Ergün uploaded, in August 2024, another montage around this sequence , in response to a verification article from our colleagues at the Turkish verification media Teyit which was already interested in misleading rumors linked to the reuse of images from this video.
“Of course, it is [portée humoristique]”, he indicates in the caption of the sequence, illustrated with screenshots from Teyit’s article.
The reality of space missions, regularly called into question on social networks
False information linked to space missions or man’s first steps on the Moon regularly circulates on social networks: several of them have been the subject of checks by the AFP.
In January 2024, after the announcement of the postponement of the Artemis 3 mission, which should send astronauts back to the Moon for the first time since the end of the Apollo program in 1972, Internet users, for example, questioned the reality of the missions. NASA manned missions on the Moon between 1969 and 1972 – using fallacious logic, as we demonstrated in a verification article.
In the summer of 2023, images of the moon landing of the Indian probe Chandrayaan-3 were taken out of context on social networks, in publications wrongly suggesting that it was a “staging“.
In May 2024, Internet users falsely claimed that the designer of the Chinese lunar probe Chang’e-6 had claimed not to have found “no trace of a lunar landing on the Moon“.
