Old photos of test dummy in capsule circulate after Blue Origin spaceflight with Katy Perry
Since humans first started venturing to space, the topic of whether missions really ever happened has become one of the mainstays of conspiracy theory culture
Six women lifted off from a launch site in western Texas on Monday, April 14, for what would become the first all-female spaceflight in over 60 years.
Among the passengers were pop star Katy Perry, CBS presenter Gayle King, civil rights activist Amanda Nguyen. The 11-minute flight, organised by journalist and pilot Lauren Sánchez – the fiancée of Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos – also had former rocket scientist Aisha Bowe and film producer Kerianne Flynn on board.
The New Shepard rocket was launched under Blue Origin's space tourism programme, which involves the use of remotely piloted launch rockets to bring non-astronauts to space. None of the six women on board were operating any part of the vehicle, and were considered passengers or space tourists.
The Blue Origin NS-31 represented more than just a historic all-female flight; it made Bowe the first Bahamian to fly to space, while Nguyen became the first Vietnamese woman in space.
But amid all the celebration and derision about the impact of this flight – some hailed it as a giant leap for women and space tourism while others questioned the environmental and ethical credentials of sending rich celebrities to space – there was also plenty of disbelief that the flight was even real.
Mannequin arms and burn marks
In the days after the Blue Origin flight, posts began to appear on social media making a series of claims that the flight was faked, that it was CGI, or that the women were not inside the capsule at all.
One such claim involved an image of what appeared to be a mannequin arm in a blue space suit, featuring in dozens of posts that were widely shared across platforms like X. These posts, some of which had views in the tens of thousands, appeared to be claiming that even if the capsule did go to space, the women were never on board.
Along with the images of the mannequin, others people asked why there were no "re-entry burns" on the capsule, which appeared perfectly clean after its return to earth. For some, it was a question posed out of genuine curiosity, like this person who later lamented the replies, while others positioned it as more "proof" the flight was a lie. Several people posted images of other space capsules with burn marks for reference.
Even outspoken rapper Azealia Banks appeared to have an open mind to the idea that the flight may have been staged. In a post on X as the crew were being interviewed after their flight, she wrote: "I don’t think they even went to space that shit was fake af. How they back already it’s been like 40 mins."
Years-old image recirculated in 2025
A simple reverse image search on the images of what appeared to be a mannequin arm led us to this article (archived here) on a 2017 test mission by Blue Origin, including images in which a test dummy could be seen inside a New Shepard capsule.
The image widely used after the April 2025 Blue Origin launch was actually captioned: "Blue Origin's Mannequin Skywalker test dummy can be seen inside the company's upgraded New Shepard crew capsule through the largest windows ever built for a spacecraft. The dummy was one of 12 payloads on a maiden test flight of the New Shepard Crew Capsule 2.0 in West Texas on Dec. 12, 2017. (Image credit: Blue Origin)"
Scientific explanation for clean capsule
As for the burn marks, space experts weighed in on social media where they speculated that there may be no scorching on the capsule as it barely left the atmosphere -- travelling just as far as the Kármán line -- and the velocity of the capsule would have played a major part.
Confusingly, several iterations of posts aiming to compare older space capsules with the Blue Origin one also used older images of previous Blue Origin capsules. However, the NS-31 capsule was white and looked clean when it landed on Earth.
Astronaut and aeronautical engineer Beth Moses replied to one of the posts asking about the burn marks, saying: "It’s a trajectory thing as others have explained in the replies. blue’s [Blue Origin's] New Shepard is suborbital (straight up, straight back down, ~Mach3 max) whereas Dragon is orbital (around the Earth and back into the atmosphere at ~Mach25). In both cases, there is a lot of friction and thus heating as the vehicle encounters the molecules in the atmosphere, first just a few but then many more as the atmosphere gets thicker closer to Earth. but the velocity of an object coming back from orbit is much higher than a suborbital object, as is the heating."
She went on to explain: "I suspect you were asking about the dark marks typically visible on orbital capsules, like your Dragon photo. the Blue capsule also must heat up as it comes back through the atmosphere and it likely has an ablative bottom surface, i.e. a heat shield, just like Mercury capsules did in decades past. (I don’t actually know since I’ve never worked for Blue, but it stands to reason.) I imagine you’d see evidence of ablation and dark streaks if you could see the underside of the Blue capsule."
Moses has flown on several spaceflights and is the Chief Astronaut Instructor at Virgin Galactic, having previously worked at NASA.
Space has long been a hotbed for conspiracy theorists
Since humans first started venturing to space, the topic of whether missions really ever happened has become one of the mainstays of conspiracy theory culture.
From UFO sightings to the earliest moon missions to pervasive discourse about whether the Earth is flat, scientists have found themselves fighting against a barrage of theories for generations -- both before and after the advent of the internet. (Archived here.)
To this day, theories abound about the 1969 Moon landing, with those keen on the theory analysing the footage from the Apollo 11 lunar landing mission which saw Neil Armstrong declare it as "one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind".
Even after that mission 56 years ago, people wondered why no stars were visible in the sky behind the moonwalkers, and questioned the fluttering of the U.S. flag that was planted on the surface of the moon.
Despite explanations over the years from NASA, the theories have persisted. Amid the mystery around space, and with the current advances in technology for AI and computer-generated images, these theories are bound to continue even as the possibility of space tourism for members of the public draws ever closer.
SOURCES
X (formerly Twitter). (2025). Available at: Something is definitely wrong with the Blue Origin “Space Flight”… that Katy Perry was on [Accessed 18 Apr. 2025].
X (formerly Twitter). (2025). Available at: It's a mannequin! [Accessed 18 Apr. 2025].
X (formerly Twitter). (2025). Available at: Can any space nerds help me understand how the Blue Origin capsule came back down without any re-entry burns? [Accessed 18 Apr. 2025].
X (formerly Twitter). (2025). Available at: JEFF BEZOS and his BLUE ORIGIN landing is such a FAKE; and notice, NO re-entry BURNS. [Accessed 18 Apr. 2025].
X (formerly Twitter). (2025). Available at: I don’t care what the news says. Katy Perry and those other women never went into space. [Accessed 18 Apr. 2025].
X (formerly Twitter). (2025). Available at: Here's definitive proof that the Blue Origin mission was faked. [Accessed 18 Apr. 2025].
X (formerly Twitter). (2025). Available at: I don’t think they even went to space that shit was fake af. [Accessed 18 Apr. 2025].
Malik, T. (2017). Later, Vader! Watch Blue Origin Fly ‘Mannequin Skywalker’ to Space and Back. [online] Space.com [Accessed 18 Apr. 2025].
Virgingalactic.com. (2025). Virgin Galactic. [online] Astronaut 002 - Beth Moses [Accessed 18 Apr. 2025].
Blue Origin. (2025). Blue Origin’s New Shepard Rocket Completes 31st Mission To Space | Blue Origin. [online] [Accessed 18 Apr. 2025].
Harvey, A. and Howell, E. (2025). 25 biggest space conspiracy theories: Debunked. [online] Space.com [Accessed 18 Apr. 2025].