Old NASA Visuals Falsely Peddled as Videos Captured by ISRO’s Chandrayaan-3

NASA confirmed to The Quint that the video shows visuals of Mars captured by Mars Opportunity Rover in 2017.

A set of two videos are going viral on social media to claim that they show the moon's surface as captured by the Indian Space Research Organisation's (ISRO) Chandrayaan-3.

(Archives of similar claims can be found here, here and here. We also received a query about this on our WhatsApp tipline.)

What is the truth?: Both these videos do not show the surface of the moon nor was it captured by Chandrayaan-3.

• National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) confirmed to The Quint that one of the videos is from their Mars Opportunity Rover project and dates back to 2007.

• The second video is also from a NASA project namely, the Mars Curiosity Rover from 2014.

How did we find out?: On conducting a reverse image search on some of the keyframes of the video, we came across a similar picture on NASA's MARS Exploration Rovers Mission website dated 29 April 2007.

VIDEO 1

• We found out that this image is related to Mars Opportunity Rover and it shows Mars' surface.

• The rover was assessing a directional technique called "Field D-star" which helps the rover to outline optimum long-range drives around the hurdles.

• We compared the keyframes of the viral video with the picture on the NASA website and found similarities.

  (Swipe right to see the comparison.)

• The Quint reached out to NASA's social media manager, Stephanie L Smith who further confirmed that the viral video was a pan across the “D-Star Panorama” from the Opportunity Mars rover.

• She also said, "Someone has added wind sound effects that were not gathered on Mars."

VIDEO 2

• On NASA's website, we came across the same picture as the viral video dated June 2014.

• The image was of the Mars Curiosity Rover project which was taken at the "Windjana Drilling Site."

• We compared a key frame from the viral video with the original image and found major similarities.

• BBC reported on the Curiosity Rover's achievements on 13 April 2015 and used this picture in their story.

• It mentioned that evidence for liquid water has been gathered on Mars.

• Additionally, we did not find any such visuals posted by ISRO's official social media handles or website.

Conclusion: Clearly, both these videos are old and unrelated to ISRO's Chandrayaan-3.

(Note: The story has been updated to add NASA's comment and also add one more similar claim.)

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