Footage from earlier uncrewed lunar mission misrepresented as Artemis II’s return

"Artemis II's return to Earth from a first-person perspective!" reads a simplified Chinese post shared by a Douyin account called "NASA Chinese" on April 12, 2026.

The accompanying clip shows fiery streaks as the spacecraft enters the Earth's atmosphere and ends abruptly with three parachutes unfolding. 

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Screenshot of the false Chinese Douyin post captured on April 16, 2026, with a red X added by AFP

The video was shared in similar Chinese-language posts on Weibo, Rednote, X, and YouTube after the Artemis II crew -- NASA’s Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, and Christina Koch, along with the Canadian Space Agency’s Jeremy Hansen -- splashed down without a hitch off the California coast on April 10 after a high-stakes re-entry (archived link). 

As the astronauts returned to Earth their spacecraft reached maximum speeds of more than 30 times the speed of sound, and faced searing temperatures around half as hot as the surface of the Sun.

The successful Artemis II mission has accelerated a space race between the US and China, with Beijing aiming to land three astronauts on the Moon by 2030. Yet, public enthusiasm in China for NASA's space program updates remains high (archived link). 

Users left comments on the Chinese-language posts expressing astonishment at how such a swift descent from orbit to sea was possible. 

"Oh my god, this looks so fast -- beyond comprehension" one wrote.

Another user said: "How can a person withstand such a rapid flip?"

But the video is from an earlier, uncrewed lunar mission in 2022. NASA also does not have any official Chinese-language social media accounts (archived link).

A reverse image search using keyframes from the circulating clip led to a 25‑minute video published by NASA on December 11, 2022, titled "Reentry video as Orion returns from Artemis I" (archived link). 

This version of the footage shared in the false posts, which is just 1:15 long, has been sped up and rotated.

The Artemis I mission was an uncrewed test flight launched in November 2022 to test the Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and the Orion crew capsule in preparation for future crewed lunar missions (archived links here and here). 

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Screenshot comparison of the false Douyin post (L) and NASA's 2022 footage, with a red X and visual similarities added by AFP

The genuine Artemis II re-entry can be seen at the 1:23:35-mark of NASA's official livestream on April 11, featuring a planned six-minute communications blackout as plasma built up around the space capsule (archived link).

AFP has fact-checked other misinformation about the Artemis II mission.