NASA did not fake a picture of Mars

26 March 2021
What was claimed

NASA faked an image of Mars.

Our verdict

This is a fake image, but NASA did not make it.

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.

This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as false because this image did not come from NASA.

Related fact checks

Full Fact fights bad information

Bad information ruins lives. It promotes hate, damages people’s health, and hurts democracy. You deserve better.