The Artemis II mission has generated worldwide excitement, but it has also sparked a surge in online conspiracy theories that the space agency is faking the moon mission. Among them is a post that claims two images show Earth 54 years apart and suspicious clouds hanging over the African continent. However, the array of photos appears to be the product of artificial intelligence, and experts told AFP that none of the photos were actually taken by the Artemis crew.
“These are two photos 55 years apart. The one on the left is from 1972, and the one on the right is the new Artemis II photo from 2026. But why are the clouds over Africa the same? If this is a real photo, how can it be real?” he says in a voiceover on a Facebook Reel posted on April 5, 2026.
The clip shows two images depicting half of the Earth, with the left labeled as a photo taken during the Apollo 17 lunar exploration in 1972, and the right labeled as a photo from the Artemis II crew photographed around the Moon in April 2026.
“Same planet. 54 years apart,” the text says.
The crew of Apollo 17, the last time humans walked on the moon in December 1972, captured the world-famous photo of Earth titled “Blue Marble” (archived here and here).
The 1972 photo was the only single-shot photo of the entire Earth taken by humans in space, including the photo taken by NASA astronaut Reed Wiseman on April 2, 2026 (archived here), until released by the Artemis II team.
AFP was unable to obtain a visual match in NASA’s official “Journey to the Moon” gallery (archived here and here).
Google’s SynthID detection tool identified SynthIDs, an invisible watermark the company claims is placed on AI-generated content created using its programs, in images.
Hive Moderation, another tool designed to detect AI images, specifically rated them as “likely to contain AI-generated or deepfake content” from Google’s Gemini AI tool.
Images don’t match
Jennifer Levasseur, curator of space history at the National Air and Space Museum, said she suspects the side-by-side images circulating on social media are from the 1972 Apollo 17 mission or Artemis II (archived here and here).
“A split image just looks like the same image when viewed from two angles,” she told AFP on April 8.
Jonathan Bamber, a professor of earth observation and glaciology at the University of Bristol in the UK, also told AFP that he believed the two photos placed side by side were versions of the same image (archived here).
“Clouds cover about 50% of the Earth at any given time, but they are never in the same places and in the same pattern,” he said on April 7.
Katie Mack, a theoretical astrophysicist at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics in Ontario, Canada, agreed that the post did not feature any photos from the Artemis II mission (archives here and here).
Mack said on April 7 that the aligned images likely came from another NASA source, a reconstruction inspired by the 1972 “Blue Marble” and enhanced by more recent satellite data (archived here).
She said the recreation appeared to have had “some modifications” made so that both sides reflected each other (archived here).
Hundreds of satellites monitor Earth’s atmosphere, land, and oceans (archived here and here).
AFP contacted NASA for comment but did not receive a response.
earth changes
Additional social media comments that used side-by-side to sow doubt about the existence of anthropogenic climate change are similarly misconceived.
“See? The coastline is still the same. The ocean is still blue and the sky is clear. I thought we were destroying the planet by now,” one Facebook user claimed.
But Professor Bamber, from the University of Bristol, said changes, including “increasing desertification”, “absolutely” can be observed even from great distances from satellites (archive here).
“Another example could be the increase in ocean heatwaves from satellite data, or changes in the intensity and number of cyclones,” he said, adding that other instruments measure snowpack, but snowpack has decreased over the past half-century (archived here, here, and here).
The Artemis crew has relied heavily on long-term observations with the naked eye during their mission to the Moon.
After completing a record-breaking lunar flyby, they were scheduled to return home and splash down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California late April 10.
