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The Columbia Deception (from the series: Junk Mail?)
Some time last year this set of photos landed in my in-tray along with the claim that they are photos of the space shuttle Columbia exploding, taken by an Israeli satellite that just happened to be in the neighborhood. Not so, of course – but a neat deception nevertheless.
I stitched the 6 photos I received together at the bottom here, as if they were frames from a movie, which they are. When the email first began to circulate NASA’s Earth Sciences and Image Analysis Lab was contacted. It immediately declared them to be fake for several reasons, one of which is that satellites do not occupy such low lying orbits orbits. NASA then went on to suggest that the photos were actually still images taken from the movie Armageddon – which proves to be correct. As Columbia was traveling at 12,000 mph on re-entry, the supposed satellite would have had to have an impossibly fast camera on board to have snapped shots like these.
~ Mark Twain
