No, NASA doesn’t have a mission to cause ‘mass psychosis’ during the April 8 solar eclipse

The solar eclipse on April 8 has become a figurative launching pad for misinformation about what will happen when the moon passes in front of the sun. 

One recent Instagram post makes claims about a literal launching pad, potentially leading social media users to worry that NASA’s plans for the celestial event are sinister. 

"As if this eclipse can’t get any stranger, NASA will launch three rockets at the eclipse on April 8th," the March 28 post said. "The NASA project is called Atmospheric Perturbations Around the Eclipse Path, or APEP, which is the name of an Egyptian serpent deity that eats the sun and embodies chaos. Apex is also called Aphophis, which is where the word Apophenia comes from. Ironically, Apophenia is the name given to the beginning stages of schizophrenia, where everything is perceived as synchronistic. So is this ritual, and all its synchronicities, a ritual causing mass psychosis?"

No.

This post was flagged as part of Meta’s efforts to combat false news and misinformation on its News Feed. (Read more about our partnership with Meta, which owns Facebook and Instagram.)

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NASA plans to launch three sounding rockets during the eclipse "to study how Earth’s upper atmosphere is affected when sunlight momentarily dims over a portion of the planet," according to the space agency’s website. "The Atmospheric Perturbations around Eclipse Path (APEP) sounding rockets will launch from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia to study the disturbances in the ionosphere created when the moon eclipses the sun." 

The ionosphere is an electrified region of Earth’s atmosphere that reflects and refracts radio signals, and impacts satellite communications, according to NASA. Better understanding this could help predict disturbances to keep communications running smoothly.

The sounding rockets were previously launched during the October 2023 solar eclipse.

The mission’s acronym was chosen because it’s the name of the serpent deity from ancient Egyptian mythology, according to NASA. According to legend, Apep occasionally pursued Ra, the sun deity, and nearly consumed him, resulting in an eclipse.

There’s no evidence to support the idea that this scientific mission will cause a mass psychosis. It didn’t in 2023, and it’s not expected to now. 

We rate that claim False.