--- title: "A Highly Trafficked Space News Site Invented a Fake NASA Engineer and Used Her Name to Publish to AI-Generated Slop" description: "A site called Space Daily got acquired by Brown Brothers, which created a fake NASA engineer to byline its articles." date: "2026-09-21" modified: "2026-09-21" authors: - name: "Victor Tangermann" job_title: "Senior Editor" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/victor.md" url: "https://futurism.com/space/high-traffic-space-news-site-fake-nasa-engineer-slop" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" - "ESA" - "Ethics" - "NASA" - "Space" --- # A Highly Trafficked Space News Site Invented a Fake NASA Engineer and Used Her Name to Publish to AI-Generated Slop ![A photo ililustration of an aerospace engineer.]() *Shutterstock / Futurism* The space publication *Space Daily*, which has been operating for over three decades, has become an unrecognizable shell of its former self after a company called Brown Brothers Media bought it and turned it into a content mill that pumps out misleading and badly sourced AI slop. As a [*Futurism* investigation]() found, *Space Daily* is averaging an estimated ten million page views per month. That would be an incredible success story — if it weren't for the fact that it's been platforming non-existent experts as puppets to churn out AI garbage. Case in point, one of the website's authors, "Dr. Katherine Chen," was identified as a former "systems engineer" at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory who "spent fifteen years designing autonomous systems for deep space missions," according to her [since-deleted profile]() on the site. A different writer, listed as "Dr. James Whitfield" by *Space Daily*, was allegedly an "aerospace medicine researcher at the European Space Agency." But *Futurism* confirmed that neither Chen nor Whitfield actually exist. Instead, Brown Brothers Media invented their personas to publish slop on a massive scale under the bylines of what looked like trustworthy experts. "Mr. James Whitfield is not currently employed by the European Space Agency, nor do our records indicate that he has ever worked here in the past," the ESA told us in a statement. While NASA declined to comment, its website doesn't make a single mention of a "Katherine Chen." After we started investigating Brown Brothers Media, the company began mass-deleting vast numbers of articles. It also deleted many of the fake writers, including Chen and Whitfield. "Before May 2026, our publications used contributor bylines that did not identify real people, and some of those biographies included credentials that were not real," the company conceded in a statement. "That was wrong. In May, we stopped publishing under those bylines, began removing or correcting the older articles involved, and published network-wide and per-site editorial standards. That review is ongoing." After the mass culling, *Space Daily* is still publishing plenty of articles, albeit under shadowy bylines like "Space Daily Editorial Team," or "Mission Notes." Many of the articles claim to have been edited by either one of the Brown Brothers Media founders, a member of its editorial team, or a constellation of contributors. Its subsequent output hasn't been inspiring. Its homepage prominently featured an [awkwardly-written piece]() about an encounter between the ESA's Rosetta spacecraft and Comet 67P — which [happened over a decade ago](). The only reason *Space Daily* is talking about it now, obviously, is to get clicks by flooding the zone in an attempt to trick Google's algorithms. Even a brief perusal of the content being published raises red flags. A [piece]() with the brain-meltingly long headline "A Trillion-Mile Stream of Gas Is Falling Onto a Triple Star, and It Lines Up With the Outermost of Its Three Tilted Rings to Within Three Degrees" is virtually incomprehensible, taking the form of a jumble of words about "angles," "fitted numbers," and "misalignments." (Pangram found it to be entirely AI-generated, with no sign of human editing.) The article is bylined by Chris Jeremia, who appears to be a "meat proxy," or an individual Brown Brothers Media uses by affixing their name to a fully AI-generated piece. Besides publishing articles about astrophysics and [cuneiform clay tablets](), Jeremia also is listed as the [magazine editor of *VegOut*](), and also finds time to [cover beluga whales in Canada that face euthanasia]() for *The Vessel* — both other AI content mills run by Brown Brothers Media. She may exist in the real world, but Jeremia appears to have just as much editorial authority as Dr. Chen and Dr. Whitfield. **More on the AI content mills:** [*How Three Brothers Built an AI Slop Empire by Buying Legitimate News Sites and Turning Them Into Zombie Content Farms That They Say Get 50 Million Page Views per Month*]() ## Author I've been at Futurism since 2017, where my role has evolved to encompass design, writing, and increasingly editing. I've always been fascinated by space exploration and advanced transportation, which I've leaned into by interviewing luminaries in those fields while closely following the dimensions of policy and regulation that allow next-generation projects to succeed -- or, sometimes, to fail. I'm also keenly interested in the effects of generative AI on society, policies, and democratic institutions, as well as clean energy, physics and biology, and the vagaries of tech leadership. My work for Futurism has been cited by publications including Ars Technica, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, Jalopnik, Fox News, and the New York Post. I spent my childhood living in locations including Manila, the Philippines, and Geneva, Switzerland, attended McGill University, and now live in Toronto, Canada. Before Futurism I worked at AskMen and a small photography studio. In my free time, I'm an avid gardener, foodie, and craft beer lover, as well as a maker of artisanal hot pepper sauces. I have a magnificent dog named Freida. ### Author social links [Bluesky]()