A photo that Facebook page Davao Trend used in its May 17 post about the proposed space agency for the country is misleading.
Carrying an image of a satellite launcher in the middle of a grassy field, the page wrote that the country’s “quest for space will begin in Mati City, Davao Oriental” and that its location was ideal for launching spacecrafts.
The visual used is misleading — the photo is actually a 2010 National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) image of a mobile rocket launcher in Florida, in the United States.
The country does not yet have the infrastructure for space launches. In fact, the most recent Filipino-made microsatellites – Diwata-1 and Diwata-2 – were launched at Cape Canaveral, Florida in 2016 and in Japan in 2018, respectively. 
The misleading online post was published three days before the Senate passed a bill seeking to create the Philippine Space Agency. Its counterpart bill was passed in the House of Representatives last December.
Davao Trend’s misleading story has been shared over 1,300 times, and has received over 1,800 reactions and more than 220 comments.
Davao Trend was created in November 2015.
(Editor’s Note: VERA Files has partnered with Facebook to fight the spread of disinformation. Find out more about this partnership and our methodology.)
