Photo from Algeria does not prove that 'NASA's Mars missions were faked'
- Published on August 30, 2024 at 05:17
- 6 min read
- By Robert BARCA, AFP Slovakia
- Translation and adaptation Carina CHENG
Copyright © AFP 2017-2024. Any commercial use of this content requires a subscription. Click here to find out more.
"First Mars landing on April 17, 2021. It turns out Mars is in Algeria," read an X post in traditional Chinese on August 15.
It appeared to show two different images of the same desert landscape. The post suggested that the top photo purportedly showing a NASA Mars mission was actually staged in Algeria.
A similar image below was captioned "ALGERIA" and showed a group of tourists looking at the same dunes and mountains.
"First flight on Mars 17 Apr 2021. By: Ingenuity Helicopter," read another caption in the middle of the two images, inferring that the image was taken by a light-weight NASA helicopter device named Ingenuity which was launched from Earth in July 2020 on board a Mars rover named Perseverance (archived links here and here).
In April 2021, Ingenuity conducted the first-ever controlled aerodynamic flight on another planet.
Possible signs of ancient life on the Red Planet were found by NASA's Perseverance Mars rover on July 21, which has made what could be its most astonishing discovery to date (archived links here and here).
The two images were also shared by thousands of social media users in English on TikTok; on Facebook here and here; and by a Slovakian user here.
Some comments underneath the posts correctly pointed out the improbability and inauthenticity of the image, but some users indicated they believed it was genuine: "This is proof we've never been to Mars, NASA is just filming in Algeria".
The claim, however, is false. The image did not come from NASA. Official photos of the Ingenuity mission on Mars can be found here (archived link).
Millions of people still believe that the moment astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first human to walk the lunar surface was a hoax shot in a Hollywood studio. AFP has debunked false claims about the Moon landing here and here.
Photo manipulation
A reverse image search on Google using the bottom half of the post found the larger version of the original photo published on a French website called "Association Culturelle Krishnamurti" (archived link).
The mountain's shadows in the background, footprints in the foreground and several other elements match the original photo.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the image in the false post (left) and the original photo (right):
The purported "Mars" version of the image was edited in a Photoshop-like software tool: the original colours were desaturated, the NASA equipment was superimposed into the frame, and the people visible in the bottom together with their elongated shadows were removed.
However, even though the edited image is blurry, one of the figure's legs from the original photo is still visible:
Image used without consent
The original photo's metadata downloaded from the French website shows it was shot on a Canon 40D camera at 9:56 am on January 6, 2009 by a photographer called "Gregory Rohart".
Below is a screenshot of the photo's metadata:
Further keyword searches on Google found that Grégory Rohart is a French wildlife and nature photographer, traveller, and blogger who also travelled to Algeria (archived links here and here).
Rohart confirmed to AFP that he took the photo, providing a screenshot of it in Photoshop Lightroom, a cataloguing and editing software often used by photographers.
The same metadata and exposure details are visible in the screenshot below:
"I took it in Algeria when I was on a hiking report in the Tadrart desert," he explained in an email to AFP on 23 August 2024 referring to the area of Tadrart, a desert, mountainous area on the border of Algeria and Libya.
"As a photographer, I obviously don't like a photo of mine to be used without my consent, even less so for it to be diverted from its original meaning," he said.
AFP has not geolocated exactly where the photo was taken within the Tadrart area.
However, another photo shows the same landscape on an Italian travel agency's website as part of an itinerary called Tadrart Acacus, a tour to the southeast Algerian region (archived links here and here).
Below is a screenshot comparison of the original photo (left) and the photo from the Italian travel agency (right):
Historic breakthrough
NASA's Curiosity rover landed on Mars in 2012 and continues its mission to this day (archived link).
The space agency's latest exploration of Mars is its 2020 mission which includes the deployment of the Perseverance rover and the Ingenuity helicopter on the surface of the red planet.
Perseverance, designed to investigate the Jezero crater, aims to search for signs of ancient microbial life and study the planet's geology and climate (archived link).
Having landed in February 2021, it collects samples of the Mars surface, paving the way for a future mission that could retrieve these samples and return them to Earth, offering unprecedented insights into the planet's history and the possibility of past life.
Is there content that you would like AFP to fact-check? Get in touch.
Contact us
