Image shows NASA rocket manufacturing site, not film studio | Fact check

Eleanor McCrary, USA TODAY
·3 min read

The claim: Image shows NASA film studio

A May 8 Facebook post (direct link, archive link) shows a photo of NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility.

"I wonder why does NASA, a space agency, have one of the world's largest film set studios among its facilities," reads text over the image. "Maybe cause, as their name indicates, Not A Space Agency, they are just a film studio, and all they do are movies?"

The post includes the hashtags "#Nasalies," "#Flatearth," and "#Globedeception."

It was shared over 200 times in a day.

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Our rating: False

The facility shown here is not a NASA film studio; it was created to assemble rockets and other space equipment. NASA rented part of the facility to a film production studio after the space shuttle program ended in 2011, but that agreement ended in 2016. The space is now used by other aerospace firms.

Michoud Assembly Facility is not a film studio

The image in the post shows NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans.

It's "America's rocket facility" and the "nation’s premier site for manufacturing and assembly of large-scale space structures and systems," according to NASA's website.

The government-owned facility, situated on more than 800 acres of land, is rented out to a variety of tenants, Shannon Segovia, a NASA communications specialist, said in an email to USA TODAY.

When the Space Shuttle Program was canceled in 2011, film studio Big Easy Productions began renting an underutilized warehouse at the facility. Several movies, including "G.I. Joe: Retaliation" and "Ender's Game," were filmed there, according to IMDb.

The contract ended in 2016. No production company is currently renting out space at the facility, Segovia said.

Most of the current tenants are involved in rocket production, like Boeing, BK Aerospace and the Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company. A list of tenants can be found on the Michoud Assembly Facility website.

Fact check: False claim humans aren't on International Space Station

NASA has been the subject of several false claims involving the film industry, including claims that the moon landing was faked and images from space were created with a green screen.

Evidence space travel is real includes photos and videos captured by astronauts, hundreds of pounds of lunar rocks, core samples, pebbles, sand and dust from the moon at the Lunar Sample Laboratory, and a large repository of data from NASA planetary missions.

USA TODAY reached out to the social media user who shared the post for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Image is NASA rocket manufacturing site, not film studio | Fact check