Likely truth behind NASA video that sparked conspiracy theory Artemis II mission is being faked

Even now, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) can't seem to shake conspiracy hunters.

Despite recently sending its Artemis II team out into the vast expanse of space on the first mission of its kind in over 50 years, a CNN interview starring the onboard astronauts (Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen) has attracted a load of naysayers, who've pointed towards the supposed involvement of green screen.

And yet, their suspicion appears to be built on wonky foundations.

A video doing the rounds on social media site X zooms in on a toy floating amongst the crew - the 'caught you red-handed' prop, so to speak.

Its caption read: "Yet more green screen augmented reality fails with the ZGI toy. Artemis II is not going well for those of us with discernment and common sense.

"This video is filmed off a TV screen which has a text artefact likely due to re-streaming the source with chromakey overlay processing turned on. The chromakey artefact is not present in any livestream source which has been broadcast by multiple major news outlets."

In response to this, the non-conspiracy folk over at The Premium 24 have cobbled together to set the record straight.

"There's a video going around claiming a 'glitch' during a NASA Artemis II livestream showed green screen text on a plush toy," they shared.

"The original broadcast does NOT show green screen text on the plush toy. The circulating version has been altered to create confusion."

Artemis II went into a temporary state of AWOL this week, as its interstellar crew lost contact with Earth for approximately 40 minutes while flying around the far side of the Moon.

Moments after breaking Apollo 13's distance record from 1970, they asked Houston for permission to name two new lunar craters.

They called the first one 'Integrity', their capsule's name, and the other 'Carroll', in honour of Commander Wiseman’s wife who died of cancer six years ago.