On Feb. 21, 2023, a Twitter user posted a video with a caption that claimed it had been recorded by NASA "eight years ago" and showed two rectangular UFOs being flown by aliens.
The tweet read, "Two UFOs recorded by NASA eight years ago have finally been released. Two rectangular UFOs are fast moving through an 'atmosphereless' region of space. It turns out that it transcends the technology of NASA." The tweet ended with the hashtag, "#Aliens."
Readers likely won't be surprised to learn that this was not true.
This tweet was misleading, to say the least.
[See also: Is Outer Space 'Only an Hour Away' if You Could Drive Straight up at 60 MPH?]
The video truly was released by NASA, but it had not been "recorded" with cameras. The clip showed a digital animation created by NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio that showed two twin spacecraft satellites from the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment (GRACE) mission, not "two rectangular UFOs" being flown by aliens. (Twitter user @HoaxEye also noted the truth behind this video.)
The part from the tweet appears at the 1:37 mark in the video's upload on the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory YouTube channel.
The original GRACE science mission ended in October 2017. NASA published that its purpose had been to "study key changes in the planet's waters, ice sheets and the solid Earth":
An award-winning mission that's changed the way we study Earth's gravitational forces and the Earth system, the Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment, or GRACE, mission flew twin spacecraft in tandem around Earth to study key changes in the planet's waters, ice sheets and the solid Earth.
In 2011, the gravity measurement technique pioneered by GRACE, which works by measuring changes in the push and pull between the twin spacecraft as they orbit Earth, was put to use on NASA's twin GRAIL spacecraft embarking on an ambitious mission to study the gravitational forces of Earth's moon.
In more than 15 years of operations, the GRACE satellite mission revolutionized our view of how water moves and is stored on Earth.
GRACE measured changes in the local pull of gravity as water shifts around Earth due to changing seasons, weather and climate processes.
Among its innovations, GRACE has monitored the loss of ice mass from Earth's ice sheets, improved understanding of the processes responsible for sea level rise and ocean circulation, provided insights into where global groundwater resources may be shrinking or growing and where dry soils are contributing to drought, and monitored changes in the solid Earth.
This story will be updated if further details come to light.