NASA’s mission to study space weather isn’t a distraction to allow ‘the Great Reset’

Social media users are claiming NASA is cautioning about a devastating technological event that could serve as a distraction for "the Great Reset." But that’s astronomically wrong.

A June 25 Facebook reel claimed that NASA warned of an impending "internet apocalypse" that could leave people without internet connection for months or even years.

"This means we are not able to connect with each other, we are not able to call each other, we are not able to go on the internet and way more," the person in the reel said. "But this also means that they can execute the Great Reset in silence without anyone knowing it."

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.)

The Facebook reel shows screenshots of articles about NASA’s supposed warning of an "internet apocalypse." These articles refer to NASA’s legitimate Parker Space Probe mission, which launched in 2018 "to revolutionize our understanding of the sun." The Parker Space Probe will travel closer to the sun’s surface than any spacecraft before it.

This closeness to the sun will let the space probe collect new information about solar winds, so NASA scientists can better understand them and how they may affect life and technology on Earth.

Want to help make PolitiFact better? Take our 2023 survey, and your answers will help us understand how we can meet your needs in the future.

Solar wind disturbances can change the orbits of satellites in space, shorten their lifespans or interfere with onboard electronics.

"The more we learn about what causes space weather — and how to predict it — the more we can protect the satellites we depend on," NASA said.

Although space weather could disrupt Earth’s power grids and satellites, NASA does not use the phrase "internet apocalypse" in its online resources about the Parker Space Probe.

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.

The phrase "internet apocalypse" appears to come from "Solar Superstorms: Planning for an Internet Apocalypse," a study Sangeetha Abdu Jyothi, a University of California, Irvine assistant professor of computer science, presented at a 2021 data communication conference. The study analyzed the robustness of internet infrastructure around the world and found that submarine cables have a higher risk of failure than land cables because of their length. If a solar storm disrupted these underwater cables, it could cause massive global power loss.

Severe solar storms are infrequent, astrophysicists say. But the study underscored the importance of bolstering global internet infrastructure to mitigate future power outages in case intense solar storms come.

Also, there’s no evidence NASA’s Parker Space Probe mission is a cover-up for something nefarious. NASA’s website doesn’t mention "the Great Reset," which started as a set of global policy ideas proposed by the World Economic Forum at the COVID-19 pandemic’s onset, but has since been hijacked by conspiracy theorists.

The theory’s believers saw the World Economic Forum’s proposal as proof that "global elites want to use the coronavirus as a tool to reorganize global societies and economies to their benefit at the expense of ordinary people, with the ultimate goal of a global totalitarian regime," according to the Anti-Defamation League. But this conspiracy has been widely debunked.

We rate the claim that NASA warned of an "internet apocalypse" so the Great Reset could occur undetected False.