Conspiracy theorists are going bonkers over a new NASA video they claim “proves” the Artemis II mission to the moon is staged in front of a green screen.
The brave crew gave a live interview over the weekend to CNN, discussing their journey to the moon while a plush toy named “Rise” floated around the capsule as a sign of zero gravity.
But a clip of the interview filmed by a cellphone from the TV allegedly shows visual distortions and flickers of text, including the letters “TAN” and “OW” across the toy’s body and head.
Conspiracists quickly seized on the clip as supposed “proof” that the entire mission was staged.
“Green screen studio glitching on the Artemis moon mission …. It’s all fake!?” one X user wrote.
“Pure green screen bulls–t. Same exact fabric they use on movie sets. Artemis? Fake as hell. They never went up there. Whole thing’s a staged circus and we’re the idiots paying for it. Truth’s buried under layers of CGI and lies. Wake up, man,” a second X user added.
“Over 50 million dollars a day to give us green screen BS,” wrote a third X user.
However, the more likely explanation appears to be that the clip was recorded from a TV display with chromakey overlay processing active.
Chromakey, also known as green-screen or blue-screen effect, is commonly used by broadcasters to insert captions, graphics and lower-third text into live footage.
Live interviews often include graphic overlays such as captions, logos, and name banners, which are digitally layered in real time over the video.
The live video and graphics can suffer mismatches, causing fragments of the on-screen text to briefly overlap with bright or moving objects, such as the plush toy in the video, making it seem as if the letters were appearing on it.
NASA and CNN’s original footage shows the toy floating normally without the strange color distortions or the flickering letters seen in the viral clip.
During the vessel’s historic launch last week, a podcaster shot down conspiracy theorists who claimed the mission was all green screen by touching grass on a livestream.
Artemis II’s crew, including NASA astronauts Victor Glove, Christina Koch, and Reid Wiseman, as well as Canada’s Jeremy Hansen, have begun their final approach to the surface of the moon.
Monday’s flyby saw the craft break the record for the farthest distance ever traveled by humans.
The crew is set to travel 252,757 miles from Earth during their fly-by of the moon, over 4,000 miles beyond the record set by the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission in 1970.
Later in the evening, the crew will be cut off from Earth for some 40 minutes as Artemis II enters a deep-space dead zone.
Already, the mission has resulted in stunning new photos of Earth — including an updated version of the iconic “Blue Marble” shot snapped by the Apollo 17 crew more than 50 years ago.
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