That astronaut who had a huge growth spurt in space? It was "fake news"

Fake news has reached the final frontier.

Norishige Kanai, a Japanese astronaut aboard the International Space Station, apologized Tuesday for accidentally tweeting the “fake news” that he’d grown so much in space he might not fit in the spacecraft home, the Japan Times reported.

Earlier in the week, Kanai, who stands approximately 5’11" on Earth, tweeted that he’d grown “like a weed” in his three weeks aboard the ISS, saying he’d gained nine centimeters, or about three and a half inches, nearly double the normal growth most astronauts experience in low gravity.

“I am a little worried I won’t fit in my seat on the return trip on Soyuz,” he said in the tweet, referring to the Russian spacecraft that would ferry him home from the floating research station in June.

And in a twist on the stories about fake news that have became common after the presidential election, it was a Russian who stopped the story from spreading, not the other way around.

A Russian colleague of Kanai’s was skeptical he’d grown so much.

Turns out he was he right. Kanai remeasured himself, and he'd actually only grown two centimeters, less than an inch.