By: Soham Shah
August 22 2023
Digitally created video passed off as view of Earth from Chandrayaan-3
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Fact-Check
The Verdict False
A zoomed-out version of the same video was first uploaded on YouTube in April 2023, months before Chandrayaan-3 was launched.
Claim ID 2da4d45b
What’s the claim?
A video was shared on X (formerly Twitter) on August 21 by an account with the caption, “Chandrayaan-3 Mission: Look how Earth looks from the Moon." Another X user also shared the video on August 20 with a caption in Hindi that read: “Here is a beautiful picture sent by Chandrayaan-3 mission from the moon!.” The video seemingly shows a view of the earth from over the moon.
Posts shared on X claiming to show visuals captured by Chandrayaan 3 (Source: X/@jkssb_aspirants,@wasimkhan0730/Altered by Logically Facts)
We found that this video was earlier shared by X user Mithilesh Keshari (@mkeshari) and has since gone viral with over 2,60,000 views and over 3,800 likes at the time this story was written.
Original post by Mithilesh Keshari (Source: X/@mkeshari/Altered by Logically Facts)
Chandrayaan-3 is Indian Space Research Organization’s (ISRO) most recent lunar exploration mission, after Chandrayaan 1 and 2. It was launched on August 14, 2023, with a lander named Vikram and a rover named Pragyan. Chandrayaan-3 is scheduled to land on the Moon’s south pole on August 23 evening. ISRO has shared several visuals of the moon on its official channels. An archive link of this post can be found here.
However, the video shared on X is digitally created and was not captured by Chandrayaan.
What’s the truth?
We could not find this video posted on ISRO's official X account or its website.
We found several users commenting on Keshari's tweet that the video looked "edited" and "fake" following which he said that the video is "AI-generated" and not captured by Chandrayaan-3.
Keshari acknowledged on X that the video is AI-generated (Source: Screenshot/X)
Logically Facts contacted Kesari to know if he created the video, to which they replied, “Yes AI Generated and Edited before posting. 🚀🌖🇮🇳” Later, a user responded to our tweet and shared the same viral video, which was earlier uploaded on YouTube on April 24, 2023. The description of this video, too, mentioned that it was an animated one.
The verdict
We mark this claim as false as the video is digitally created and does not show visuals of the Earth captured by Chandrayaan-3.
(Update: The story has been updated to reflect that an older version of the video existed in April 2023.)