CLAIM: Footage purporting to show astronauts aboard the International Space Station is staged and was actually filmed on Earth.

AP’S ASSESSMENT: False. A spokesperson for NASA and space science experts say the footage is legitimate and that there is ample evidence to show that there are real people on the massive research complex floating above Earth. Additionally, examples cited as proof of an elaborate hoax are easily explained. Footage of astronauts in space suits working underwater is from training exercises at NASA, for example, and video glitches are due to satellite transmission interruptions.

THE FACTS: Some social media users are reviving a long-running conspiracy theory that no one is actually manning the wheel in the International Space Station that’s been orbiting Earth for more than two decades now.

A number are sharing a video clip that purports to show visual evidence that many scenes from the football field-sized floating laboratory are faked using Hollywood tricks.

The clip suggests some footage from the station contains astronauts purportedly pulling at hidden wires or wearing harnesses in order to appear to be in a gravity-less environment.

It also suggests that “air bubbles” can be seen in some of the shots of astronauts floating outside the station, proving that the images were actually shot underwater in a movie studio and not in space.

“If astronauts are really up there, why are they faking the footage?” wrote one user in an Instagram post that’s been liked nearly 11,000 times as of Thursday. “I can think of a lot better things to do with $3 BILLION per year!”

But NASA officials dismissed the notion, saying video glitches cited in the posts as evidence of “green screen” and CGI use are actually the result of brief transmission interruptions between the station’s communication antennas and the agency’s satellite network.

“At no time have props, green screen, wires or simulated underwater facilities substituted for actual real-time operation on the space station,” Sandra Jones, a Houston-based spokesperson, wrote in an email Thursday that also included links to the agency’s blog about the crew’s activities as well as its “Spot the Stationtracking tool.

Space experts concurred, noting that many of the other phenomena cited in the video are also easily explained.

“None of it remotely has merit,” Jonathan McDowell, an astrophysicist with the Center for Astrophysics at Harvard University. “The material you can see on NASA TV and onRoscosmosvideos of live coverage of crewmembers aboard ISS is clearly legit and to suggest it’s faked is just silly and ignorant.”

He argued that the portion of the video clip that purports to show an astronaut tugging at a suspension wire holding up one of his colleagues more likely depicts the space explorer adjusting a microphone or headset cable behind his colleague during an on-camera interview.

McDowell added that amateur radio operators frequently speak with astronauts in orbit, and the radio frequency shifts they experience during those communications is evidence the astronauts are high above the planet.

“There’s a thing called the Doppler shift which changes the frequency of a radio signal from a moving object,” he explained in an email. “From that you can prove that the radio transmitter is moving at very high speeds such that it must be in orbit.”

Joshua Colwell, a planetary scientist who chairs the University of Central Florida’s physics department, said the footage of astronauts in spacesuits working underwater also isn’t proof space scenes are staged.

The video is actually from training exercises at NASA’s Neutral Buoyancy Lab, where astronauts prepare for the weightless environment of space, he said.

And while it’s true that Italian astronaut Luca Parmitano “nearly drowned” when his helmet took on water, as the video notes, that’s not a smoking gun, either, Colwell said.

The 2013 incident _ along with a similar, less severe one last year _ was actually the result of a faulty cooling system in the astronaut’s space suit, which contains water.

“There is no air in the vacuum of space to conduct heat away from the astronaut,” Colwell explained in an email. “So the spacesuits use a water cooling system to keep astronauts from overheating.”

What’s more, the underwater air bubbles purportedly captured in some videos of astronauts doing work outside the space station are more likely dust or ice particles, he said.

“Bubbles of gas moving through a fluid do not follow a perfectly straight line as they rise to the surface,” Colwell explained in an email. “The things I saw in the video shown do not move in parallel lines but move outward like a fan from a common point of origin, and they move at a constant speed and in perfectly straight lines.”

Built through a partnership of five space agencies from 15 countries, the International Space Station launched in 1998 and has been continuously occupied since November 2000, according to NASA.

Among the current crew of seven are astronauts from the United States, Russia and the United Arab Emirates.

On Friday, two of the astronauts are planning a more than6-hour long spacewalk to work on power cables and a communications antenna in preparation for the installation of a new solar array, according to NASA, which maintains a website blog and social media accounts providing frequent updates about the crew’s activities.

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This is part of AP’s effort to address widely shared misinformation, including work with outside companies and organizations to add factual context to misleading content that is circulating online. Learn more about fact-checking at AP.

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