This article is more than 1 year old

The Independent 'live streamed' space vid recorded in 2015

'We naturally regret the human error that led to the mistake'

For reasons unknown, on Sunday The Independent "live streamed" footage from space that was more than two years old.

The BBC reports the newspaper played International Space Station spacewalk footage from February 2015 on its Facebook page, stopping and taking down the video after being contacted by the Beeb.

A spokesperson for The Independent told El Reg that it pulled the video "after it was brought to our our attention that a video stream we believed to be – and which we described as – live was in fact footage from some time ago".

"We naturally regret the human error that led to the mistake," the spokesperson added, declining to comment further.

Passing pre-recorded space videos off as "live streams" isn't a new concept. About 17 million watched Unilad's Facebook page in 2016 for different spacewalk footage from 2013.

And even this same footage has reportedly been misrepresented before by the likes of Viral USA.

According to the BBC, the new Independent video post was viewed by more than 180,000 people and received 2,000 shares.

The International Space Station, which US president Ronald Reagan "directed NASA" to build in 1984, has a mass of 460 tons and orbits 240 miles above Earth. The first segment of the ISS, a Russian proton rocket named Zarya, did not launch until 1998, however. It was only the ninth occupied space station to be launched but has the record for longest human occupation.

NASA's webpage said that there have been 205 spacewalks since December 1998 – the last was on October 20.

NASA's real live footage from the International Space Station instruments can be found here. ®

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