The Artemis II mission has been met with global excitement, but also an uptick in online conspiracy theories about space agencies faking lunar missions — including posts claiming two images show Earth 54 years apart with suspiciously identical cloud cover over the African continent. But the side-by-side appears to be the product of artificial intelligence, and experts told AFP it does not actually include the photo taken by the Artemis crew.<\/p>\n
“This is two pictures 55 years apart. Left is 1972. The right is the new Artemis II picture from 2026. Now, why are the clouds over Africa identical? If this is a true picture, how could this be real then?” says the voiceover in a Facebook reel\u00a0posted\u00a0April 5, 2026, News.Az<\/a> reports, citing foreign media.<\/a><\/p>\n The clip shows two images depicting half the Earth, with the left side described as a picture taken during the 1972 Apollo 17 lunar mission and the right labeled as a photo from the Artemis II crew that shot around the Moon in April 2026.<\/p>\n “Same planet. 54 years apart,” the text says.\u00a0<\/p>\n Similar posts comparing the\u00a0images\u00a0also circulated on\u00a0other platforms, including\u00a0X.<\/p>\n The crew on the\u00a0Apollo 17 mission\u00a0in December 1972 — when humans last walked on the Moon —\u00a0took\u00a0a world-famous picture of Earth titled “Blue Marble”.<\/p>\n The 1972 photo was the only whole-globe, single-shot\u00a0photograph of Earth\u00a0taken by a human in space until those released by the Artemis II<\/a> team, including a picture captured April 2, 2026 by\u00a0NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman.<\/p>\n But despite the social media posts claiming to juxtapose two pictures taken by humans 54 years apart, the side-by-side visual does not show Wiseman’s 2026 photo — or the original “Blue Marble” shot from 1972.<\/p>\n AFP could not retrieve\u00a0any visual matches\u00a0in the official\u00a0NASA “Journey to the Moon” gallery.<\/p>\n Google’s SynthID detection tool identified a\u00a0SynthID\u00a0— an invisible watermark the company says is attached to AI-generated content created using its programs — in the image.<\/p>\n Hive Moderation, another tool designed to detect AI imagery, assessed that it “is likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content,” specifically from Google’s Gemini AI tool.<\/p>\n Images do not match<\/p>\n Jennifer Levasseur, space history curator at the US National Air and Space Museum, said she doubted the images in the side-by-side spreading on social media were from either the\u00a01972 Apollo 17 mission\u00a0or\u00a0Artemis II.\u00a0<\/p>\n “The split image simply looks like the same image from two angles,” she told AFP on April 8.<\/p>\n Jonathan Bamber, a professor of Earth observation and glaciology at the University of Bristol in England, also told AFP he believed the two pictures placed side-by-side to be versions of the same image.<\/p>\n “At any one time clouds cover about 50 percent of the planet but never in the same place in an identical pattern,” he said April 7.<\/p>\n Katie Mack, a theoretical astrophysicist at the\u00a0Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics\u00a0in Ontario, Canada, agreed that the posts do not show the photo from the\u00a0Artemis II mission.<\/p>\n Mack said April 7 that the juxtaposed images likely stem from another\u00a0NASA source\u00a0— a recreation inspired by 1972’s “Blue Marble” and enhanced by more recent satellite data.<\/p>\n She said the recreation appears to have been given “some modifications” to make the two sides mirror each other.<\/p>\n AFP contacted NASA for comment, but a response was not forthcoming.<\/p>\n Earth changes “Would you look at that, the coast lines are still the same, waters are still blue, skies are clear. I thought we were supposed to have destroyed the planet by now,” one Facebook user claimed.<\/p>\n But the University of Bristol’s Bamber said changes can “absolutely” be observed from a satellite-distance, including “increased desertification”.<\/p>\n “Another example would be\u00a0increased marine heat waves from satellite data\u00a0and\u00a0changes in cyclone intensity and number,” he said, adding that\u00a0other instruments measure snow cover extent, which has decreased in the last half century.<\/p>\n The Artemis crew has relied heavily on\u00a0long periods of observation\u00a0with the naked eye in their mission to the\u00a0Moon.\u00a0<\/p>\n After completing their lunar flyby — in which they also broke the record for distance from Earth — they\u00a0were bound for home, with splashdown due in the Pacific off the California coast late on April 10.<\/p>\n
Additional social media\u00a0comments\u00a0using the side-by-side to sow doubt about the\u00a0existence of human-induced climate change\u00a0are similarly\u00a0misconstrued.<\/p>\n