Fake video of Earth was not captured by India's spacecraft

This article is more than one year old.
Published on August 28, 2023 at 09:00
Updated on August 29, 2023 at 03:02
3 min read
By Uzair RIZVI, AFP India

After India's historic lunar landing, a fake video appearing to show a view of the Earth surfaced in posts claiming it was filmed from the Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft that touched down near the Moon's south pole. The clip was shared by various members of India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). But the footage was made using computer-generated imagery. The creator of the video posted it in April 2023, months before India's lunar mission.

"Here is a beautiful picture sent by Chandrayaan-3 mission from the moon!" says a Hindi-language post by Wasim Khan on X, formerly known as Twitter.

The post viewed more than 250,000 times on X was shared on August 21, 2023, two days before India became the first nation to land a spacecraft on the Moon's south pole.

The unmanned Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft, which means "Mooncraft" in Sanskrit, was launched into orbit on July 14 and touched down near the Moon's south pole shortly after 6:04 pm India time (1234 GMT) on August 23.

Screenshot of the false X post taken on August 23, 2023.

The clip was also shared in X posts here and here.

Similar claims alongside identical footage were shared here by RanjitSinh Patil and here by Raghvendra Sharma, both are members of India’s ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (archived link).

But the viral clip created with computer-generated imagery was uploaded in April, three months before Chandrayaan 3 was launched.

Computer-generated imagery

A reverse image search on Google found the original video posted on a YouTube channel "The Infinite Madness" on April 24, 2023 (archived link).

The video is titled "How Earth looks from the Moon" and features hashtags that include #vfx -- which stands for "visual effects" -- and #animation.

"The Infinite Madness" YouTube channel features various space-related videos, for example here and here, created using computer-generated imagery (archived links here and here).

The creator of the video and owner of the YouTube channel, Anil Verma, said the video did not show real footage of the Earth.

"This video has been created by via vfx," he told AFP in an email on August 21, 2023.

He also posted a clarification on X, which said: "This video of mine is going viral as Chandrayaan3 landing but I have made that in April and posted on my YouTube channel" (archived link).

Below is a screenshot comparison of the video in false posts (left) and Varma’s YouTube channel (right). The clip shared in false posts shows the Moon's surface tilted towards the left, while the original video depicts it as being horizontal.

Screenshot comparison of the false post (left) and original YouTube video (right)

As of August 25, India's Space Research Organisation has only posted one image of the Earth captured by Chandrayaan 3 on its official X account, which does not correspond to the fake video (archived link).

August 29, 2023 This story was amended to correct a link in the third paragraph.

Is there content that you would like AFP to fact-check? Get in touch.

E-mail