Photo from Algeria does not prove ‘NASA’s Mars missions were faked’

On July 21, NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover discovered possible signs of ancient life on the Red Planet, in what may be the most astonishing discovery yet (archived links here and here).

The two images were also shared by thousands of social media users in English on TikTok; on Facebook here and here; and by a Slovak user here.

Some comments under the posts rightly pointed out the image’s improbability and inauthenticity, but some users indicated that they were convinced that the image was authentic: “This is proof that we have never been to Mars, NASA only films in Algeria”.

However, the claim is false. The image is not from NASA. Official photos from the Ingenuity mission on Mars can be found here (archived link).

Millions of people still believe that the moment astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the surface of the moon was a hoax in a Hollywood studio. AFP has debunked false claims about the moon landing here and here.

Photo manipulation

A reverse search on Google using the bottom half of the post yielded the larger version of the original photo published on a French website called “Association Culturelle Krishnamurti” (archived link).

The shadows of the mountain in the background, footprints in the foreground and various other elements match the original photo.

Below is a screenshot of the image in the fake post (left) and the original photo (right):

The alleged “Mars” version of the image was edited in a Photoshop-like software program: the original colors were decolorized, the NASA equipment was superimposed on the image, and the people visible at the bottom were removed along with their elongated shadows.

Although the edited image is blurry, one of the legs of the figure from the original photo is still visible:

Image used without permission

The metadata of the original photo, downloaded from the French website, shows that it was taken on January 6, 2009 at 9:56 am with a Canon 40D camera by a photographer named “Gregory Rohart”.

Below is a screenshot of the photo metadata:

Further Google searches revealed that Grégory Rohart is a French nature and wildlife photographer, traveler and blogger who has also traveled to Algeria (archived links here and here).

Rohart confirmed to AFP that he took the photo and sent a screenshot of it in Photoshop Lightroom, a cataloging and editing software often used by photographers.

The same metadata and exposure details are visible in the screenshot below:

“I took it in Algeria, when I was doing a hiking report in the Tadrart desert,” he explained in an email to AFP on August 23, 2024, referring to the Tadrart area, a desert-like mountainous region on the border of Algeria and Libya.

“As a photographer, I obviously don’t like it when a photo of mine is used without my permission, and especially not when its original meaning is distorted,” he said.

AFP has not been able to determine exactly where within the Tadrart area the photo was taken.

However, there is another photo showing the same landscape on the website of an Italian travel agency. This photo is part of an itinerary called Tadrart Acacus, a tour to the region in southeastern Algeria (archived links here and here ).

Below is a screenshot of the comparison of the original photo (left) and the photo from the Italian travel agency (right):

Historic breakthrough

NASA’s Curiosity rover landed on Mars in 2012 and continues its mission to this day (archived link).

The space agency’s latest exploration of Mars is the 2020 mission, which will deploy the Perseverance rover and Ingenuity helicopter to the surface of the Red Planet.

Perseverance, designed to explore Jezero Crater, aims to search for signs of ancient microbial life and study the planet’s geology and climate (archived link).

After landing in February 2021, the spacecraft will collect samples from the Martian surface, paving the way for a future mission that can retrieve these samples and return them to Earth, providing unprecedented insights into the planet’s history and the possibility of life in the past.