Astronauts

Does the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) hide the existence of the military base on Diego Garcia island in the Indian Ocean? No, that's not true: As of this writing, the agency discusses this specific base on the publicly available section of its website. The claim appeared in a post published on Instagram on July 13, 2023. The caption said: Island…

Has the Chinese space program staged an elaborate and obvious hoax? Is an open glass jar with water in it sitting out on a table in plain sight during a mission evidence that they did not really go into space? No, that's not true: Shenzhou-13 was one of a series of manned space missions by China National Space Agency. This…

Is livestreamed footage of the lunar module Challenger's 1972 takeoff from the moon fake since the technology did not exist at the time to livestream such an event? No, that's not true: NASA's chief historian confirmed to Lead Stories that the "footage is authentic to the Apollo 17 mission." As part of the Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s,…

Do jumpy cuts in the asparagus-eating video recorded by Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield while in the zero-gravity environment in 2013 prove it was shot in a "Hollywood basement," outer space does not exist and Earth is flat? No, that's not true: In 2015, Hadfield, who became known not only as a space explorer but also as a space video blogger,…

Was the "Teletubbies" television show based on a story of four psychotic children who purportedly were abused and who ultimately died horrifying deaths in a mental health institution? No, that's not true: The creators of the show said they were inspired by astronauts from the moon landing in creating their characters and by British comedians. The claim appeared in a…

Did WikiLeaks in December of 2022 release Apollo 11 "moon landing cut scenes filmed in Nevada desert," proving that the moon landing never happened and was instead staged for filming right here on Earth? No, that's not true: The video in this post splices together a scene from a 1977 fictional movie, which was not even filmed in Nevada, and…

Does former President Richard Nixon's call without a string of cellphone towers prove that NASA never put astronauts on the moon? No, that's not true: A NASA spokesman explained to Lead Stories that the agency used massive radio antennas and ground tracking stations to connect Nixon with the astronauts. The nonexistence of cellphones in 1969, therefore, does not prove that…

Does a composite image showing the Space Shuttle Challenger commander Francis Richard Scobee and the CEO of Cows and Trees, Richard Scobee, prove that the 1986 space shuttle disaster never happened and the astronauts did not die? No, that's not true: The catastrophe was broadcast live, and its details were thoroughly investigated and reported to the president of the United…

Is it impossible to find a "real photo" of Earth taken from space that is not computer generated? No, that's not true: Seventy-six years ago, on October 24, 1946, the first photo of Earth was taken from a V-2 rocket 65 miles above the New Mexico desert. The rocket fell back to Earth as planned, crashing in the desert, and…

Do astronauts only train in swimming pools, and not vacuum chambers, because space is not a vacuum and "Outer Space is a hoax"? No, that's not true: A spokesperson at NASA told Lead Stories that its astronauts have "limited training" in vacuum chambers, which NASA has used for decades to test materials that go into space. Astronauts also train in…