A viral theory claiming that NASA used landscape of Devon Island to represent its exploration of the Mars planet has surfaced on social media. Posts based on the baseless claim used multiple images from the Canadian island for comparison with NASA's imagery from the red planet.
What is Being Claimed?
While the conspiracy theory suggesting that NASA has been using images from Devon Islands for The Haughton Mars Project, has been in existence for a while now, the latest claim resurfaced following a video which shows multiple comparative images from the Arctic Island and the images uploaded by NASA showing the Mars landscape.
Soon there were others who fueled the theory further. "Dont think mars is a planet, certainly doesn't look like one from other peoples pictures¬ nasa's fake ones Mars is on Devon island in Canada To think there's a helicopter flying in almost no atmosphere is insane Also made a few errors forgetting edit rats out & walrus bones," tweeted a user.
"The Mars Rovers, all of them are on Earth and they are a hoax. What people see them doing is moving around a NASA place proving ground that is an island in Canada named Devon Island North Canada," wrote another.
"Lol Mars = Devon Island, Canada. You can go there whenever you like.. just not the exact section where NASA has a base where they test out their rovers/film them crawling around and pretend it is Mars," read a tweet.
Here is the Truth
Debunking the viral claim, Lead Stories claimed that the speculations were baseless and there is no evidence that the space agency has "misrepresented images from the Haughton Mars Project (HMP) or any other analog mission conducted on Earth as if they were images of Mars."
The fact checking outlet further stated that the terrain of Devon Island, Canada, resembles that of Mars which is why the site was picked to undertake various analog missions by the space agency. NASA website's describes analog missions as "field tests in locations that have physical similarities to the extreme space environments."
The NASA website also features a page related to HMP wherein one can have a 360 degree virtual view of the Devon Island using Google Earth. It may be recalled that The Haughton-Mars Project, an international multidisciplinary field research project, is related to advancing planetary science and exploration. It is based on the scientific study of the Haughton meteorite impact crater. Further the terrain on Devon Island, High Arctic, viewed as a planetary analog, in particular for the Moon and Mars, the outlet reported.
