A video purports to show a NASA astronaut using a green screen to fake being in space. But that isn’t what happened. Let’s look at the facts.
NewsLit takeaway
Instilling doubt can sometimes spread conspiracy theories more effectively than providing any evidence for them. This video, for example, was not created to prove that NASA uses green screens to lie about space travel; instead, it aims to show how NASA could lie about space travel if it wanted to. USA Today fact-checkers identified the woman in the video as a flat Earth believer acting in a skit, which later went viral.
The flat Earth conspiracy theory isn’t as much about proving that the Earth is flat as it is to sow doubt about scientific knowledge. There still are a surprising number of people who embrace flat Earth beliefs.
- “Fact check: False claim that video shows NASA astronaut Karen Nyberg in front of green screen” (Chris Mueller, USA Today).
- “No, this isn’t a video of a NASA astronaut pretending to be in space” (Ciara O'Rourke, PolitiFact).
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