Conspiracy posts misidentify 'Mad Max' actor as NASA astronaut

"The actress for the Artemis mission has been found. Astronaut Christina Koch is an actress. She played the role of a Vuvalini (Guardian of the Oasis) in the 2015 film Mad Max: Fury Road," reads the simplified Chinese title of a Bilibili post on April 12, 2026.

The video contains a photo of a group of women in costume, with the one on the far-left of the image circled in red and subsequently displayed next to a picture of NASA astronaut Christina Koch. 

It also includes other pieces of "evidence" that NASA's space missions were staged, including green screen footage debunked by AFP.

US astronauts Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch, and Victor Glover along with Canadian Jeremy Hansen made history on the Artemis II mission in April 2026, circling around the Moon and traveling further into space than any other humans (archived link). 

Artemis II was the first crewed mission to venture to the Moon’s orbit since 1972, and the only one in history to include a woman, or a Black astronaut, or a non-American (archived link).

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Screenshot of the false Bilibili post, taken April 24, 2026, with red X added by AFP

However, the mission also faced a deluge of false online claims suggesting it was staged, adding fresh fuel to a longstanding conspiracy theory that NASA's 1969 Moon landing was faked (archived link).

Similar posts about Koch being an actor surfaced on Weibo, X, and Chinese forum Hupu. The claim also circulated in English, Spanish, Italian and German posts. 

Namibian actor

The Christina Koch who starred in the post-apocalyptic 2015 film, "Mad Max: Fury Road" -- about a woman rebelling against a tyrannical ruler with the aid of a group of female prisoners -- is a different individual that shares the same name.

On the movie's IMDb page, Koch is listed as one of five actors playing a tribe collectively called "The Vuvalini" in the film, alongside Melita Jurisic, Gillian Jones, Joy Smithers and Antoinette Kellermann (archived link).

AFP was unable to find pictures or contact details for Koch online, but one of the other actors, Smithers, told AFP Koch is not an astronaut.

"Our fellow Mad Max Vuvalini Christina was cast in Namibia, has no agent, and was originally part of the Mad Max wardrobe team when she auditioned," she told AFP in an email on April 17.

"She was in her 50's when we filmed. She still lives in Namibia and is not an astronaut."

According to IMDb, "Mad Max: Fury Road" was filmed in 2012 and 2013 (archived link). Astronaut Christina Koch was born in 1979 and would have been 33 at the time (archived link).

A keyword search on Google found a biography written by NASA, which said Koch was doing remote scientific field work in Antarctica and Greenland in 2010 and continued in 2012 (archived link). In 2013, she was chosen to be one of eight members of the 21st NASA astronaut class.

Smithers also pointed out the actor Christina Koch in the circulating group photo, she is in fact the woman second-from-left in the image.

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Comparison between the actress (L) and the astronaut, with highlights added by AFP

AFP crosschecked the group photo with headshots of actors who starred in "Mad Max: Fury Road" and found that the woman circled in the circulating image is in fact Gillian Jones (archived link).

The rest of the actors, from left to right, are Antoinette Kellermann, Melissa Jaffer, Jurisic, Smithers, Megan Gale and Charlize Theron (archived here, here, here, here, here, here).

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Comparison of the group photo and the headshots of the actresses, with names and markings added by AFP

AFP has fact-checked a different false claim that the Artemis II mission was staged.