Conspiracy theories about space exploration in general​

Challenger crew members did not die

I’d like to start this paragraph with a thought for the victims and their families, and regret that the loss of these people can be used by conspiracy theorists.

This tragedy is often used by conspiracy theorists with an image that contains the photo of the seven victims as well as photos of 7 people more or less resembling them, with the same name and still alive.

This theory has been properly debunked in the following article:

FACT CHECK: Are the Crew of the Exploded Challenger Space Shuttle Still Alive?

Conspiracy theory claims the seven astronauts supposedly killed in the 1986 Space Shuttle Challenger explosion are quietly living out their lives in the U.S.

(Copy : https://web.archive.org/web/20230415200252/https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/challenger-crew-alive/)

There are no stars in space photos

The majority of photographs taken in space contain no stars, and for an extremely simple reason that any amateur photographer knows: light!

To take photos of objects in space, you need to set your camera to a very short exposure time (i.e. the time during which the camera will capture light), otherwise the subject will be overexposed. As the exposure time is very short, the starlight is too weak to be captured by the camera, so no stars are visible.

If you’re “exposed” to the sun, it’s like taking a photo in broad daylight on Earth: there won’t be any stars!

This is something you can experience on Earth with an SLR camera, for example: set the exposure time to the minimum and photograph the sky at night: it’s highly unlikely that you’ll see any stars in the photo…

Having said that, it’s perfectly possible to have stars in photos taken in space, provided the photographer wanted to photograph stars and he did it… at night! It’s as simple as that.