By ITV News Producer Hannah Ward-Glenton<\/p>\n
Over the last 10 days, the Artemis II mission has captured the world’s attention. <\/p>\n
People have closely followed the mission around the moon, marvelling at the footage captured by the team and shared by Nasa, widely regarded as the world’s leading space exploration organisation.<\/p>\n
But not all of the responses have been positive. <\/p>\n
Photos, videos, and news coverage of the space mission have received hundreds, if not thousands, of skeptical comments online suggesting the content is fake. In more extreme cases, people have even claimed the mission itself is staged. <\/p>\n
Here, ITV News looks at why Artemis II <\/a>has triggered a flurry of conspiracy theories. <\/p>\n What are the conspiracy theories around Artemis II?<\/p>\n One of the most common conspiracy theories around the Artemis II mission is that it did not happen at all, and may have been staged using green screens. <\/p>\n One video, which has been viewed over one million times, shows the astronauts suspended by wires in front of a prop space capsule, as if a studio is trying to recreate the look of weightlessness in space.<\/p>\n The footage is AI-generated, created using Google AI, according to the company’s SynthID watermark check tool.<\/p>\n The Artemis II crew captures a faint view of a crescent Earth above the horizon on the moon\u2019s far side. Credit: Nasa<\/p>\n Other conspiracy theories revolve around how photographs Nasa shared of the far side of the moon. They claim the images must be fake because there is light in the photos.<\/p>\n But Nasa explained the reason behind the light in a statement on April 3, saying: “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\u2019s far side, the hemisphere not visible from Earth, lit by the Sun”. <\/p>\n Subscribe free to our weekly newsletter<\/a> for exclusive and original coverage from ITV News. Direct to your inbox every Friday morning. <\/p>\n There were also questions over details in some TV coverage of in-space press conferences, which appeared to show a random logo projected onto a plush toy in the capsule. <\/p>\n This was widely quashed as a technical error by the TV station rather than proof of the mission being faked.<\/p>\n Conspiracy theories around Artemis II have been perpetuated and elevated by well-known people. <\/p>\n Former British MP Andrew Bridgen, for example, shared two photos with his 361,000 followers, claiming one was from the Apollo 8 mission in 1968 and one was Artemis II. <\/p>\n “It\u2019s a remarkable coincidence that the Earth was exactly the same orientation to the moon with exactly the same cloud coverage when these two pictures were taken 68 years apart. Am I now a coincidence theorist ?\u201d he wrote on X. <\/p>\n Social media users quickly noted that the second image was not from the Artemis II mission at all. <\/p>\n Where do space conspiracy theories come from?<\/p>\n Doubts around the Artemis II mission<\/a> are by no means the first conspiracy theories around space travel. <\/p>\n Hoax rumours around the moon landings in 1969 weren’t uncommon at the time, and they have continued to circulate in the decades since then.<\/p>\n There were, and still are, beliefs that the Apollo moon landings were a Hollywood production, designed to suggest the US had won the Space Race.<\/p>\n