A picture widely circulating on social media claims to show NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore posing alongside US President Donald Trump and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk following their return to Earth aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule. The claim suggests that the astronauts, who were stranded in space for nine months, were welcomed back by Trump and Musk.
The above post can be seen here (archive). Another such post can be seen here (archive)
FACT CHECK
NewsMobile fact-checked the picture in question, and found it to be AI-generated.
A thorough search yielded no legitimate news reports or official acknowledgements from NASA, SpaceX, Elon Musk, or Donald Trump confirming such an event. If the image were genuine, it would have been globally reported by mainstream media and shared by official sources.
While the picture appears convincing at first glance, a closer look uncovers signs of AI generation — unnatural facial expressions, inconsistent lighting, awkward texture blending in the background, and subtle distortions.
To further verify our findings, we ran the images through AI detection tools — Verifye and Hive Moderation — which confirmed that the images were digitally created.
So, we can conclude by saying that the viral image claiming to show astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore with Donald Trump and Elon Musk is digitally manipulated.
