Acting NASA Administrator’s post gets embarrassingly fact checked

Last week, NASA Acting Administrator Sean Duffy shared a major accomplishment for President Trump’s space program. The issue is that the accomplishment he was talking about has nothing to do with President Trump’s space plans and began even before President Trump’s first term.

Last week Japan’s space agency, JAXA, launched its HTV-X spacecraft on an H3 rocket. A project that began in 2015 was created to replace the H-II vehicle that once supplied the International Space Station. The HTV-X will take over that role with future missions to the ISS.

Duffy’s post, shared after the HTV-X’s launch, touted the mission as a “milestone to advance @POTUS’ vision for global space leadership.” That is even though the mission was for Japan, by Japan, and had nothing to do with President Trump.

This was quickly pointed out by X’s users with a community note highlighting the mistake. “HTV-X is a Japanese spacecraft, built by a Japanese company, launched on a Japanese rocket, from Japan, to be captured by a Japanese astronaut driving a Canadian robotic arm.”

Duffy will soon be out of the NASA chief job as President Trump recently re-nominated Jared Isaacman for the NASA administrator role.