FE Meme
Leaked NASA Photo: Dinosaur on the Moon?
#126: A "leaked NASA photo" shows an Apollo astronaut beside a dinosaur on the Moon, NASA has been lying for decades.
The Meme
Black-and-white Apollo-style frame with crosshairs: kneeling astronaut and sauropod silhouette on the lunar surface; headers "Leaked NASA Photo" and "They've Been Lying To Us For Decades!"
Why It Spreads
Obvious absurdity makes the Apollo dinosaur frame shareable as anti-NASA humor, and space-skeptic networks recycle any moon hoax joke as shorthand for agency distrust. The "leaked NASA photo" header lets viewers broadcast cynicism without engaging lunar telemetry or retroreflector data.
What It Gets Wrong
The black-and-white Apollo-style frame with "Leaked NASA Photo" and a kneeling astronaut beside a sauropod silhouette is deliberate satire, not lunar telemetry. Apollo missions left retroreflectors still used for laser ranging to the Moon roughly 384000 km away, plus seismic instruments and independently tracked trajectories. Lunar reconnaissance imagery shows hardware on the surface decades later; a photoshopped dinosaur does not flatten Earth or explain why southern flight times and GNSS orbits match a spheroid. TestTheGlobe's Apollo Moon Landings Were Real and TestTheGlobe's Satellite Visibility walk through the observations and predictions this image skips.
The Debunk
Apollo retroreflectors, seismic data, and independent laser ranging to ~384000 km predict real lunar missions on a spheroid Earth; that fits decades of measurement. A black-and-white Apollo-style frame with a photoshopped sauropod and "Leaked NASA Photo" header is inconsistent with telemetry, not agency exposure. Use TestTheGlobe's Satellite Visibility to compare the meme's claim with a measurable prediction.
- TestTheGlobe's Apollo Moon Landings Were Real page covers retroreflectors, seismic data, and independent tracking that remain measurable decades after the missions.
- TestTheGlobe's Satellite Visibility tool lets observers confirm predicted passes of spacecraft whose trajectories assume a round Earth and real orbital mechanics.
- TestTheGlobe's Apollo Moon Landings Were Real: independent laser ranging to Apollo retroreflectors still returns distances to the lunar surface at ~384000 km, not a studio set with a dinosaur silhouette.
- TestTheGlobe's Satellites Are Not Real: deliberate absurdity in the edited frame signals parody; space-agency distrust is not a substitute for horizon curvature or GNSS geometry.