What was claimed
NASA faked an image of Mars.
Our verdict
This is a fake image, but NASA did not make it.
NASA did not fake a picture of Mars
A Facebook post claims to show that an “original NASA photo of Mars” is a doctored version of an image taken in Bulgaria. In fact, NASA never released this image.
The post shows a picture of Pobiti Kamani, a natural rock formation in Bulgaria, with the colours changed so that the rock looks red. Beneath this is the original image of the rock formations.
A message at the bottom of the image reads “Esporre una grande cospirazione”, which in Italian means “exposing a big conspiracy”.
However, we cannot find any evidence of NASA using this image. A reverse image search did not show it on any NASA websites.
NASA itself said that this picture “is not a NASA photo of Mars”, when Reuters reported on this last year. It said the same to AFP last month.
There is a gallery that includes some real NASA pictures of Mars on its website.