What was claimed
A picture shows Earth as captured from the window of the Orion spacecraft during the Artemis II mission.
Our verdict
This image is fake and was almost certainly created using AI. It contains Google AI’s SynthID watermark, and does not match any of the genuine images released by NASA from the mission. The capsule window depicted has five sides, unlike the four-sided windows on the real Orion capsule.
A fake picture supposedly taken from the Orion spacecraft as part of the Artemis II mission is circulating on social media.
The image, which has been liked thousands of times on social media, appears to show the Earth through a window on the Orion spacecraft, which is carrying astronauts on a fly-by of the far-side of the moon as part of the Artemis II mission.
One version, showing what appears to be clouds over Earth, has been shared with the caption: “This is the first image of Earth captured by Artemis II from space that clearly shows EARTH is NOT FLAT.”
This picture contains SynthID, an invisible watermark added to content created with Google’s AI tools.
As we’ve explained before, the presence of a watermark can't tell us whether AI was used to completely generate a brand-new image or modify an existing one.
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But this image hasn’t been shared by NASA on its official channels, or in galleries for the lunar flyby, journey to the moon or mission launch and doesn’t appear in legitimate media reports of the Artemis II mission. We also checked the astronaut's individual social media pages, and couldn’t find it being shared there either.
NASA has shared real images showing astronauts aboard looking back at Earth. The window in these genuine images has four sides and doesn’t match the viral picture.
We also asked NASA directly about the image, and a spokesperson pointed us to official images being released on its newsfeed. The picture being shared on social media doesn’t match these either.
This leads us to conclude that they have almost definitely been generated with AI tools.
Before sharing content like this that you see on social media, it’s important to consider whether it could have been altered, faked or manipulated with AI. Our toolkit contains guides on how to spot suspected AI content.
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 altered because these aren’t real images taken from the Artemis II lunar mission.
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