(UPDATED) A photo of a mobile rocket launcher platform in the United States taken more than a decade ago is making the rounds online, misleading Filipino Facebook users that it is a launch site of the Philippine Space Agency (PhilSA) in Davao.
Two pro-administration FB pages posted the photo along with the caption: “Philippines quest to space will begin in Mati City, Davao Oriental.”
While some netizens were quick to flag the posts as “misleading” or “fake news,” many believed it showed the supposed local structure and praised President Rodrigo Duterte’s administration.
The image was not taken in Mati City, Davao Oriental, which was earlier proposed as a possible launch site because of its ideal location.
The Philippines does not have its own rocket launch site yet, the agency wrote in an email to VERA Files Fact Check.
A reverse image search shows it was actually a 2010 image of a mobile rocket launching platform at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida in the US. It was captured by photographer Jim Grossman for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration or NASA.
In May 2019, while a bill creating the PhilSA was being discussed, an astro-geophysicist connected with a university in Davao City told SunStar Davao that Mati was being eyed as the first launch site of the country due to its proximity to the equator. The bill was enacted into law in August of the same year.
“There are no ongoing projects of the PhilSA related to local launch sites at this time, although PhilSA continues to study possibilities for international cooperation or partnership, and the technical and economic feasibility of such a facility and other infrastructure that support the local space ecosystem,” PhilSA said.
FB pages GO Bisdak (created Aug. 15, 2019) and Go Digong (created May 16, 2019) uploaded the misleading posts on Nov. 20, garnering a total of 1,481 interactions. They emerged three weeks after the Philippines and the United Arab Emirates held a meeting to discuss bilateral space cooperation.
The same piece of misinformation was fact-checked by VERA Files in 2019.
(Editor’s Note: This story was updated on Dec. 6, 2021 to reflect the response of the Philippine Space Agency.)
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