Artemis II did not reach the Moon, and the entire mission was staged, just as it happened with Apollo 11 in 1969, conspiracy theorists claim on social media, recycling decade-old stories.
NEWS: In dozens of posts identified by Veridica on social media, particularly on TikTok, followers of conspiracy theory have questioned the Moon landings of six decades ago and the Artemis mission, either directly or by asking “questions” like:
If man did reach the Moon in 1969, why is he just going to the “back” of the Moon this time? Where was technology lost? Why did it take nearly 60 years to pass for man to go toward the Moon again? Anyway, everything is bad CGI (Computer-Generated Imagery, a technique used for in animations, special effects in movies, and virtual worlds, E.N.) and the images published by NASA are AI-generated fakes.
Two of the most viral clips spreading these conspiracies on Romanian TikTok reached 1.8 million users in 3-4 days (here and here).
NARRATIVE: The Artemis II mission was, just like the Apollo missions, a hoax, and man never reached the Moon or its vicinity.
PURPOSE: To feed conspiracy bubbles and keep a loyal audience captive, who thus maintain their distrust in anything involving technology, authorities, the evolution of science, etc.
WHY THE NARRATIVE IS FALSE: First of all, conspiracy theorists group together two NASA projects with different missions. Artemis II is part of a three-stage program (Artemis I, Artemis II, Artemis III), and the Moon landing was planned for 2027 (III), but at the start of this year NASA announced that this will most likely no longer take place.
However, even so, Artemis II was a crewed test flight, without a Moon landing, so it was the equivalent of the Apollo 8 and Apollo 10 missions, not Apollo 11 (which was scheduled to reach the Moon).
As for the “technology that disappeared”, in fact only “production” was stopped. The USA invested less and less in infrastructure and NASA programs after the arms race and the space race from the Cold War period, between the USA and the USSR, subsided.
Then, it must be understood that the Apollo program was rather one of political interest, given that the so-called “space race” took place in the context of the Cold War, in which the two superpowers, the USA and the USSR, competed to demonstrate their technological (and implicitly military) superiority and to gain prestige. When the program that would lead to the conquest of the Moon was launched, the USA faced huge pressure after the USSR had recorded several premieres in space. The Americans succeeded, however, through massive NASA funding, to undo all the efforts and premieres of the Soviets with a single mission.
Then, after this happened, NASA's budget was drastically reduced, and the priorities became the International Space Station, the space shuttle, etc. In other words, for 60 years, there was no longer a need for such a show of force on the part of the Americans.
As for “computer-generated images” this can be verified simply by accessing the images from the European Space Agency or the International Space Station, and the “irregularities” in the images published by NASA from Artemis II can be compared with the “irregularities” that appear in the ESA and ISS images and which are identical.
Therefore, if the Artemis II images are fake, then the ISS images are also fake, but this thing would require them to be faked also by or with the agreement of Russia, Canada, Japan or Europe (ESA) which are part of the International Space Station.
So, if they were fake, hundreds of live experiments, the images of several international space agencies, including those of Russia, Japan and Canada, would have to be faked simultaneously.
And for the images to be generated with AI, this would have to happen in real time, but this thing is impossible because: 1. It is information that is verifiable and accessible to anyone, 2. It is risky and impossible to generate AI live while hundreds of millions of people are probably watching those moments unfold, and many can verify the authenticity of the images.
What makes these recordings even more viral is also the fact that, in social media, anything that “looks bizarre” is surely “fake”, and for any atypical thing achieved by authorities, users demand “proof”. Furthermore, the recordings analyzed by Veridica are relatively short, have a heavy mystical and religious content, and p0romote the idea of a struggle between Good (Earth) and Evil (Space).
BACKGROUND: Conspiracy theories referring to human travel in space generally appear in times of emotional upheaval (ex: launches such as that of Artemis II) or when NASA / the authorities publish the first images.
Giving one's opinion and analyzing the images provided by authorities has become an international sport: whenever the authorities publish such images, they have to be fake, and people start looking for that fake (ex: is there / isn’t there a shadow / gravity, this or that object moves strangely, the lights do not fall as they should, etc.).
Moreover, such conspiracy theories full of emotion and “debate” are encouraged precisely by the algorithms of the medium in which they go viral fast: social media, particularly TikTok, the network with the least verified content.
The lack of specialized knowledge on behalf of users who do not understand how microgravity works, how delays in transmission appear, or “how the lights should hit”, consolidates the unfortunate context in which these theories gain traction.
Last but not least, the conspiracy theories related to Artemis II come against a backdrop of profound distrust in institutions after six years of crises caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, political crises, the war in Ukraine, but also the wars fought by the USA.
Further read on Veridica: The Moon Landing: "A story invented by the American government and Hollywood" and The Earth is flat. Aristotle, Magellan, and NASA lied that it is spherical.
