Clip shows video game footage, not how India moved space rocket prior to launch

This article is more than one year old.
Published on August 31, 2023 at 10:42
3 min read
By Uzair RIZVI, AFP India

As India's space programme prepared to land a spacecraft near the Moon's little-explored south pole in August 2023, a video was shared in social media posts that falsely claimed it showed how the lunar rocket was transported across a makeshift bridge to its launch site. But the video in fact shows footage captured from the video game MudRunner and circulated months before the launch of India's Chandrayaan-3 mission.

"Before launch, Chandrayan 3 (sic) while crossing a bridge on a truck, see how much mental pressure the truck driver had to take, same wilĺ land on the moon on 23 August around 5 pm, watch on TV Live," reads the caption of a video shared here on X, formerly known as Twitter, on August 23, 2023.

The two-minute, 20-second video appears to show a truck struggling to transport a rocket across a narrow temporary bridge.

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 post, captured on August 28, 2023

Similar footage was shared on Facebook here and here and on X here.

While the footage appears to be computer-generated, comments on the post suggest some users believed it genuinely showed the Chandrayaan-3 launch rocket being transported.

"Can't the Indian government build a small bridge over the river instead of taking such a huge risk?" read one comment.

Another said: "Proud of India for taking this to the space launch centre in such difficult conditions."

Video game footage

There are considerable differences in the colour, shape and markings between the rocket in the falsely shared video and the launch vehicle used in the Chandrayaan-3 mission (archived link).

Below is a screenshot comparison between the rocket in the falsely shared video (left) and the Chandrayaan-3 launch vehicle (right):

Screenshot comparison between the rocket in the falsely shared video (left) and the Chandrayaan-3 launch vehicle (right)

A reverse image search on Google using keyframes from the video led to a similar video uploaded to YouTube here on April 1 (archived link).

The YouTube video is titled: "Aborted Rocket Launch l Game MudRunner."

MudRunner is a simulation game where players can drive off-roading vehicles in a variety of landscapes (archived link).

Further searches led to a similar video uploaded on Facebook here by an Indonesian user called Rahdian on March 6 (archived link).

The falsely shared video corresponds to the section that begins at the 27-second mark and ends at the two-minute, 47-second mark of Rahdian's video. Rahdian's video also has the same watermark in the top-right corner.

Below is a screenshot comparison of the falsely shared video (left) and the video uploaded by Rahdian on Facebook (right):

Screenshot comparison of the falsely shared video (left) and the video uploaded by Rahdian on Facebook (right)

Rahdian confirmed the video being falsely shared online is from the game.

"It is my video, and in the video, it's clear that it is the MudRunner game which I was playing,” he told AFP on August 28.

The developers of MudRunner, Saber Interactive, told AFP the footage does appear to be from their game.

"You can add your own modifications to the game, this is one of [the modifications] made by the players," said Saber Interactive's Jana Goranskaya in an email on August 27.

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