The human race is once again breaking records, and while it's been some 54 years since we last sent mankind to the Moon, we're making another giant leap. The four-person crew of NASA's Artemis 2 mission is in the final furlong of its 10-day mission, but having overtaken Apollo 13's 1970 record for going further into space than anyone before, we hope there's champagne on ice.
With social media not being a thing back in 1972, we've been able to watch the Artemis 2 team far more closely than the Apollo 17 astronauts – even finding time to chat with President Donald Trump while up in space.
Of course, the conspiracy theories are once again swirling, with some claiming we're not up there at all. Similar to a bizarre conspiracy theory that Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin never sent Kary Perry to space, images from Artemis 2's Orion spacecraft have naysayers again reaching for their tinfoil hats. There have been plenty of snapshots from the Artemis 2 astronauts, although one particular image showed a view from the spacecraft against an inky backdrop of nothingness.
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Due to an apparent lack of stars, conspiracy theorists think this is 'proof' that Reid Wiseman, Christina Koch, Victor Glover, and Jeremy Hansen aren't up there at all.
This is nothing new, as back when Apollo 11 landed on the Moon in 1969, the ‘no stars’ theory first did the rounds. A post-mission press conference saw the Apollo 11 astronauts admit they didn't remember seeing any stars during their extravehicular activity, while conspiracists claimed that NASA didn't put stars in the background of its 'faked' Moon landing because astronomers would be able to figure out they'd been taken from Earth.
Thankfully, Artemis 2's quartet was here to shut that theory down before it even took off. The astronauts have been keeping themselves busy by fielding questions from the general public, with one person asking: "I wonder, do you still see stars in outer space?"
Managing to debunk yet another conspiracy theory, mission specialist Jeremy Hansen explained how he'd been discussing this exact point with his fellow crewmates earlier that day.
Hansen continued: "I've definitely seen stars in outer space, and I was saying, 'I haven't seen as many as I thought I would'." Handing over to Reid Wiseman, the ship's captain added: "We have so much illumination, from the Sun on the Moon and the Earth right now, it's hard at times to see stars. Just like when you walk out in the daytime, you see a blue sky but no stars, we look outside, and we see the black space and no stars."
Wiseman looked ahead and said that they'd be pointing into deep space that evening on the far side of the Moon. Planning to turn out all of the lights on their Orion spacecraft for the first time in the mission, Wiseman said: "If you give yourself about 20 or 30 minutes...we do this all the time on the International Space Station...you'll start to see the stars.
"If you give it enough time, you'll see so many stars it's hard to see the constellations because there are so many stars out there."
Referring to the 'coolest' part of the stars, Wiseman concluded that they don't twinkle at all: "They are just perfect, they almost look fake, perfect pinpricks of light."
This isn't the first time the issue has come up, with a popular Reddit thread pointing to the many pictures of NASA astronaut Don Pettit, who has made a name for himself by capturing images of the cosmos.
Encouraging people to look at Pettit's photos from the ISS, the top comment reads: "Look at how bright the service module is. Stars are very very dim compared to direct sunlight bouncing off of aluminum. If they adjusted their camera exposure to try and see the stars, the entire view would be washed out by the sunlight."
Another added: "It's a f**king stupid argument. Don't you think if they really were faking it and you could see stars, they would just photoshop the pictures? Like we spent $93 billion and they are so stupid they forgot the stars?
A third concluded: "On this theme - the number of comments I’ve seen on Instagram in the last 24 hours saying the moon landings were faked and Artemis is faked and various other sh*t makes my head explode. How are people actually that dumb?"