A GLAMOROUS Instagram star who soared to fame by claiming she was an astronaut has been exposed as a fraud by NASA.
Laysa Peixoto, known to her 156,000 followers as @AstroLaysa, announced earlier this month she’d been picked for a career in space exploration.
Laysa Peixoto claimed she was a NASA astronaut, but the space agency says she was never part of its program[/caption]
The 22-year-old told her 156k followers she was chosen for missions to the Moon and Mars[/caption]
Peixoto said she was joining the “Astronaut Class of 2025”[/caption]
The Brazilian was only part of a NASA student workshop — not a career track or flight crew[/caption]
The 22-year-old Brazilian claimed she earned a spot in the coveted “Astronaut Class of 2025” with plans to fly to the Moon and Mars after completing training in 2022.
But just days after her triumphant Instagram reveal – complete with snaps of her in a NASA-branded jumpsuit and helmet – NASA itself came crashing into her orbit with a reality check.
The agency said bluntly in a statement: “This individual is not a NASA employee, principal investigator, or astronaut candidate.
“It would be inappropriate to claim NASA affiliation as part of this opportunity.”
Peixoto, from the state of Minas Gerais, has told followers she was chosen by private space outfit Titans Space for a 2029 mission led by Veteran NASA astronaut Bill McArthur.
She gushed in a post on June 5: “It hasn’t fully sunk in yet, but I feel immense gratitude for the entire journey I’ve taken so far and for everyone who has been and is a part of it.”
She added: “It is a great joy to represent Brazil as an astronaut in such a decisive era of space exploration… It is an honour to carry the Brazilian flag with me as the first Brazilian woman to cross this frontier.”
But NASA’s no-nonsense response made it clear she had never trained with them and had only participated in a student workshop called L’SPACE – which it described as neither a job nor an internship.
Titans Space added to the confusion, confirming she had been accepted into a “candidate programme” – a far cry from a guaranteed seat on a rocket.
The company reportedly doesn’t even hold a license to conduct manned spaceflights.
The programme Peixoto apparently joined is a $1million “Inaugural Astronauts” package promising a five-hour space trip and just three hours of zero gravity.
Questions around Peixoto’s education also started brewing.
She had claimed to be earning a master’s in Quantum Physics and Computing at Columbia University in New York City.
But the Ivy League school said there’s no record of her.
In a post, she said: ‘It is an honour to carry the Brazilian flag with me…’[/caption]
She was linked to a private $1M “space experience” by Titans Space[/caption]
Peixoto also claimed she was studying Quantum Physics at Columbia University[/caption]
Meanwhile, her former university in Brazil confirmed she was dismissed in 2023 for failing to re-enrol.
In the aftermath of her post, Peixoto’s team said: “At no time is there a mention of NASA, or that it would be an astronaut from the agency.
“The post was never edited.”
But eagled-eyed internet sleuths say otherwise – noting the post was edited and included photos heavy with NASA iconography.
The bizarre saga saw the “fake astronaut” at the center of social media jokes.
One user quipped on X: “All I have to say is that anyone who saw a girl wearing a space camp jumpsuit claiming to be a lead astronaut researcher deserves to be fooled, when she’s clearly just an ambitious and wealthy person.”
After backlash, Peixoto insisted she never claimed to be a NASA astronaut — despite posts showing NASA gear and logos[/caption]
