![FourthEstate](https://thefourthestategh.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/4thestate-log-2a.png")
On April 9, 2026, President John Dramani Mahama took to social media to applaud National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) astronaut Christina Koch for her selection as the only female crew member on the Artemis II mission.
His posts also highlighted what was described as her symbolic act of displaying the Ghanaian flag in space, an act that resonated widely as a tribute to her ties to Ghana. Koch’s historic role as part of the first crewed mission to orbit the Moon in over 50 years has sparked a wave of congratulatory messages, many of which celebrate her connection to Ghana.
Against this backdrop, several viral posts and news reports have claimed that she displayed Ghana’s national flag during the Artemis II mission. The mission has drawn attention in Ghana because she attended the University of Ghana as an exchange student, where she reportedly took courses such as History of Africa, History of Ghana, Twi for Beginners, Rural Sociology, and Music.
Among the images shared on the President’s X and Facebook accounts is a collage that includes a photo of Koch holding the Ghanaian flag inside what appears to be a spacecraft. Notably, this image has not been published by NASA or any credible international media outlet. It also does not appear on Koch’s own social media pages, where she regularly documents her missions.
Picture not from NASA Artemis II Mission Gallery
The Fourth Estate wrote to NASA to verify the photo’s authenticity and to determine whether it was taken before or during the mission. The Agency, in an email, shared links to all photos and videos related to the mission (see here, here, and here). The gallery, however, did not contain any photos of Christina Koch holding the Ghana flag.
Ghana flag not included in items taken on board Artemis II Mission
Ahead of the Artemis II mission, NASA shared the official flight kit. The kit contained the full list of items the crew was traveling with to space. While the kit contained some flags, such as US flags and Apollo Mission flags, it did not include a Ghana flag.
The photo originated from the Ghanaian media
The Fourth Estate’s checks show that before April 10, 2026, when the photo was shared on the social media accounts of President Mahama, no international media outlet or notable international platforms had published the photo. Instead, the image appears to have circulated primarily within the Ghanaian media. The Fourth Estate conducted a reverse image search of the photo, which traced it to one of the earliest appearances in a Facebook post by Ghana Media, a news blogging platform. When contacted, the blog declined to show The Fourth Estate the source of the photo.
AI analysis
The link attached to the Ghana Media post leads to an article published on April 7, 2026, titled “American Astronaut Christina Koch Waves Ghana Flag in Space Ahead of Historic Artemis II Mission.” The article features additional images of Koch inside a spacecraft. Analysis using AI detection tools such as Image Whisperer, Hive Moderation, and Deep AI indicates that one of the images in the collage is likely AI-generated. In fact, many of the images used by Ghana Media across its stories are artificially generated, further confirming the results presented by the AI detection tools.
A visual observation of the photo
A closer look at the image of Christiana Koch holding the Ghana flag shows some disparities. The NASA logo on the astronaut’s spacesuit in the image shows clear inconsistencies when compared to the agency’s official insignia. In the authentic NASA meatball logo, a white orbital path loops around the abbreviation “NASA”, particularly encircling “A” and “S” while a red vector cuts diagonally across the blue sphere, passing behind and through parts of the lettering, “N”, “A” and “S”. In the image shared by Ghana Media, however, the orbit does not follow this pattern, and the red vector appears distorted.
Another widely shared image of the Ghana flag hanging in a spaceship, which was included in the President’s post, is genuine.
However, it has been misrepresented, as it is unrelated to the Artemis II mission. It was originally posted by Koch on her Instagram and X accounts in December 2019, during her mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS). During that mission, she set the record for the longest single spaceflight by a woman, spending 328 days in orbit.
The image is now being recirculated out of context to support a misleading claim that it was taken during the current lunar flyby, which was launched on April 1, 2026. It lasted for 10 days, ending on April 10, 2026.
In conclusion, the photo of NASA astronaut Christian Koch holding the Ghana flag in a spaceship, which was shared by the media and social media accounts of President Mahama, is not real. Thus, the astronaut did not pose with the Ghana flag before, during, or after the Artemis II mission.
