After decades of space travel, claiming that NASA rockets can’t reach space is Pants on Fire!

An Instagram post claimed that NASA space travel by rocket is fake because the space agency’s rockets aren’t capable of getting there. 

"We don’t lie, like NASA," said the text over a video.

The video begins with a clip of a young man stating that the rockets can’t reach space because "they would run out of fuel, it’s all made up." 

He suggested that rockets are merely launched into the sky before landing in an ocean.

"They will never launch a rocket from the middle of the country; it won’t make it to the ocean, it’ll crash on dry land," he said. "So, NASA has to launch rockets from Texas and Florida because it’s right by the water."

The post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

There are numerous examples of NASA space missions, including these:

• On July 20, 1969, American astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to set foot on the moon.

  Featured Fact-check

  

  Viral image

  stated on April 23, 2019 in a Facebook post

  Neil Armstrong’s space boots don’t match a photo of his footprint on the moon, suggesting the moon landing was a hoax.

  

• Humans were last on the moon on Dec. 14, 1972, when the lunar module Challenger was filmed using a small, portable television camera attached to a pan-and-tilt unit that could be controlled from Earth via a high-gain antenna on the lunar rover, as the National Air and Space Museum explained on its website.

• The International Space Station has been visited by 269 people from 21 countries, according to NASA, which has launched rockets there.

NASA launches rockets from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station  Kennedy Space Center in Florida, near the Atlantic Ocean. SpaceX, a company NASA chose to create a moon lander, launches from Boca Chica, Texas, along the Gulf Coast. Launches are done over water for safety, partly to avoid populated areas, in case of a malfunction.

After decades of space travel, it’s false and ridiculous to claim that NASA rockets can’t reach space. We rate the Instagram post Pants on Fire!

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