SpaceX rocket explosion falsely presented online as failed India mission
- Published on July 24, 2024 at 10:57
- 4 min read
- By Tommy WANG, AFP Hong Kong
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"India's rocket exploded on the spot and more than a billion dollars were lost. The results of the investigation were unbelievable. The rocket exploded because the propulsions were installed backwards!" read the simplified Chinese Weibo caption alongside a video shared on June 27, 2024.
The footage shows masked Indian space agency workers followed by a clip of a rocket bursting into a roaring ball of flames.
"What kind of research team is this? How did they manage to install the booster the wrong way around? How did they put it on? This process must have been very challenging and creative ... India, too capable!" the video's caption mockingly added.
The post surfaced as China celebrated the return to Earth of its Chang'e 6 probe bearing rock-and-soil samples from the little-known far side of the Moon.
Beijing has poured huge resources into its space programme over the past decade, targeting ambitious undertakings to catch up to traditional space powers the United States and Russia.
Just months prior, India became the first nation to land a craft near the moon's south pole. The mission has cost $74.6 million -- far lower than other countries, and a testament to India's frugal space engineering.
The video and screenshots taken from it were also shared alongside similar claims in other Weibo posts; on news aggregator site Netease; and Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok.
Comments from many social media users indicated they believed the footage showed an Indian rocket exploding.
"The engineering drawings are reversed?" one user commented.
"It's a very difficult bug," another said.
The explosion clip, however, shows a failed SpaceX rocket launch in 2016.
A reverse image search of a keyframe from the video, followed by keyword searches found the original video titled "SpaceX - Static Fire Anomaly - AMOS-6" published on a YouTube channel called US Launch Report on September 2, 2016 (archived link).
US Launch Report is a video production company run by disabled veterans (archived link).
It also mentioned in the video's comments that it was filmed more than two miles away in Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the video shared in the false Weibo post (left) and the US Launch Report clip (right):
US broadcasters ABC and CBS also published the footage on the same day (archived links here).
AFP reported on September 2, 2016 that an unmanned SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket exploded on the launch pad during a test in Florida on September 1, destroying an Amos-6 satellite that Facebook planned to use to beam high-speed internet to Africa.
AFP also published a video taken from the incident from a different angle with credit to the US space agency NASA, as shown below:
Unrelated clips
Reverse image searches found the clips of masked Indian space agency workers were taken from a live-stream by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) on August 12, 2021 -- during the Covid-19 pandemic (archived link).
Below is a screenshot comparison of the video shared in the false Weibo post (left) and the live-streamed video released by ISRO (right):
The live-streamed video shows the launch of India's GSLV-F10 mission from the country's Satish Dhawan Space Centre on eastern Sriharikota island.
The rocket suffered a "catastrophic failure" according to the website Space.com (archived link).
ISRO's report on the mission said an "anomaly in the Cryogenic Upper Stage led to the mission abort" (archived link).
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