What People Are Getting Wrong This Week: Was the Artemis II Mission Fake?

The Artemis II moon mission was a full success. Its crew of four astronauts splashed down safely on earth last week after traveling further into outer space than any humans before them. Like most Americans, I followed the mission with a sense of wonder and pride that felt out-of-place in 2026–this was actual history being made, and even my blackened heart swelled. But not everyone was excited; some people are not buying this whole "orbiting the moon" thing and are convinced that the mission never happened. Everyone is lying, the images and videos we've seen are bogus, and spaceflight doesn't even make sense.

I've spent a lot of time digging into the many conspiracy theories online surrounding Artemis II, and there are two rough categories. The first is people who nitpick video feeds for "evidence" that the mission wasn't genuine. I'll address some of those theories later, but first, I want to talk about the more interesting kind of space-skepticism—the kind that comes from a failure of imagination.

Science-based Artemis II conspiracy theories

Science-based skepticism questions specifics of this mission and space travel itself with a sense of "it couldn't possibly be real." And I get it. The idea that people, just like you and me, strapped themselves onto a rocket and blasted past the damn moon, then returned safely to earth is so awe-inspiring, it can be seem unbelievable. So I got in touch with Joel Meyers, a theoretical cosmologist and professor at Southern Methodist University, to get some science-based, down-to-earth answers about how space flight really works.

But let's get this out of the way first:

Stephen Johnson: Was the Artemis mission fake?

Joel Meyers: Absolutely not.

SJ: ...That's the official line. But off the record, just between you and me, it was fake, right?

JM: Still no. It was not faked.

SJ: Okay, then.

"The rocket's trajectory would lead back to Earth."

Many online conspiracy theorists have taken issue with Artemis' trajectory. The rocket did not shoot straight into the sky toward the moon. Instead, it looked like it was heading back to earth to land in the Bermuda Triangle:

According to Meyers, that's by design. "The biggest challenges are getting out of the atmosphere, and then getting out of the gravitational well of the Earth," he said. "But it doesn't go vertically upward, but rather on a trajectory that puts it marginally in orbit around the Earth."

To put Orion in Earth orbit, NASA chose a trajectory where the curve of its fall matches the curve of the Earth, so the craft is essentially always falling towards the planet but missing the ground. To get to the moon, you first orbit Earth, then widen your orbit until the moon is in your way.

"Going straight up, on a straight line trajectory from the Earth to the moon, would be extremely challenging. It would use much more energy, and there's no reason to do it." Meyers said.

"How could they see anything on the 'dark side' of the moon?"

Many online took issue with the astronauts' stunning photos of the "dark side" of the moon. "If it's dark, how can they take photographs of it?" people asked. This is mainly a problem with the phrase "dark side of the moon," and I blame Pink Floyd for this (and many other things.)

"The same side of the moon always faces the Earth, and we refer to the opposite side of the moon as, more technically, the far side of the moon," Meyers said. "When the side of the moon that's facing the Earth is dark, when it's a new moon, that means the other side of the moon, the far side of the moon, is illuminated. From the perspective of where that picture was taken, the sun was just behind the photographer, so it was illuminating the far side of the moon."

"That somebody was up there to take a picture, with the far side of the moon illuminated, actually gives stronger evidence that indeed this was not fake," he added.

"How could the speed of the ship be slowed down by just a couple of parachutes?"

The Artemis' Orion Crew Module returned to Earth at a speed of around 25,000 miles per hour. Then it slowed down to around 20 mph for splashdown with just three dinky parachutes. How is this even possible? According to Meyers, most of the slowing-down doesn't come from the parachutes. "The drag, or passing through the atmosphere, does a significant amount to slow down the vessel," Meyers said, "They passed through miles of atmosphere that burned off much of the speed by the time the parachutes are deployed ... the parachutes are deployed only at a later stage to slow the descent to a degree that's comfortable for humans to land and splash down."

Video evidence of Artemis conspiracy theories

With the science out of the way, let's take a look at the video footage conspiracies. There are many videos online that pick apart specific details in the footage sent back from the Artemis mission to indicate it didn't happen. But all of them do more to prove the mission was real than to reveal it as fake.

"The food bag floats through the astronaut's ear."

In the above video, you can see what looks like a food bag "phasing through" an astronaut's ear. "Don't tell me this is a glitch or an artifact," TikToker @knightfallenangel says in the video. I'm sorry, but I am telling him that it is a video artifact: It's compression noise caused by high-definition video being made small enough to be transmitted from space to Earth and then sent to your iPhone. Crystal-clear video would be a better indication of fakery, because it wouldn't have to travel so far under such unusual circumstances.

"The green screen is glitching out."

The above video supposedly shows the green screen "glitching out" in footage from the mission. The debunk is contained right in the footage here too. First, this is from a single station's broadcast, not the feed from NASA itself. The same interview on other stations contains no glitch. Best explanation for what's happening here: The local station uses some kind of green screen to display its online graphics. Ride, the mission's plushy mascot, wears a hat that is various shades of green and blue. When the footage contains just the right shade of green/blue, the local feed replaces it with the station's graphics.

If the source footage was "shot on green screen," you'd see the background in parts of Ride's hat every time the green/blue parts of the toy appeared on the stream. (My own conspiracy theory is that NASA chose Ride's hat color as subtle proof that it's not freakin' green screen.)

"Why isn't the iPad floating?"

The iPad in this shot really isn't floating, but I'd guess it's kept in place with Velcro, which was specifically designed to keep things from floating away during space missions. It could be magnets too.

Also: The photo that often accompanies this footage that seems to show astronauts on wires in a green screen studio is AI-generated.

You can tell by the extra fingers, plus those black wires would be prominent on any green screen footage shot in this studio.

"Christina Cook's hair proves the mission is fake."

Some people have noted that astronaut Christina Cook wears her hair loose during the mission. I'm not sure how this is evidence that the videos are faked, but her hair actually proves the footage is genuine. First, there's the way it fans out from her head, because gravity isn't acting on it. Secondly, green screen does not deal well with translucent things like hair, especially with light coming from behind it. What you'd see is "spill," a green fringe around her head. Overall, Cook's hair would be a special effects person's nightmare. The amount of precision CGI it would take to perfectly animate "weightless hair" while also correcting for the spill might be possible to pull off for a few moments (if you had a large team working on it and several million dollars), but there are hours of this footage. If it was green screened, someone would have just told Cook to pull her hair back or wear a hat.

"This launch video shows the astronauts exiting the craft on a zipline."

NASA chose to launch the Artemis II mission on April 1. Scientists say the date was chosen based on orbital mechanics, mission requirements, and weather and lighting conditions, but what if it was a subtle signal that the whole mission is a big joke? Joke or not, check out this detail from NASA's launch footage:

At issue are those pods. Right before the rocket lifts off, the pods shoot in the other direction, as you can see here:

"See? That's the astronauts not going on the rocket ride," some concluded. But if the mission was faked, why would they bring the astronauts into the Orion in the first place? And why would they make their "exit" so obvious? What you're seeing is actually the Artemis Emergency Egress System, an emergency escape mechanism in case of launch pad problems.

Science belongs to everyone

The AEES is just one aspect of a mission that was exhaustively documented. NASA lays out every detail. There aren't a lot of secrets here, which makes the spread of these weird theories so perplexing.

"There's a bit of an in-group mentality to conspiracy theorists. They see themselves as questioning authority and not taking what's fed to them by the 'mainstream media,'" Meyers says. "But I find it a bit confusing as a scientist, because, unlike a lot of other topics for which conspiracy theories develop, there is no sense of authority in the process of science. It's for everyone. The discoveries we make as a human species belong to the whole species."

"Hopefully, seeing some of the science, seeing some of the experiments that astronauts can carry out, will help them understand that this really is an amazing human achievement, and we can all take part in that. It's not a matter of us versus them."