Fact Check: Chandrayaan-3 is not carrying astronauts, viral clip is from Transformer 3 movie

Hyderabad: A video showing two astronauts entering what looks like a broken spaceship on a lunar surface is in circulation on social media, with users claiming that scientists onboard Chandryaan-3 have reached the moon and discovered something new there.

India’s ambitious moon mission, Chandryaan-3, launched on July 14, 2023, is gradually approaching the moon. According to the last update of The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), the spacecraft will lower its orbit around the moon on August 14 between 11:30 am and 12:30 pm. This manoeuvre brought the spacecraft closer to the Moon’s surface, lower than 1,437 km.

The spacecraft is set to land near the moon’s little-explored south-polar region, an area believed to hold potential for new findings.

Fact Check

NewsMeter found that the viral video is from the 2011 Hollywood film Transformers 3 - Dark of the Moon. Chandrayaan-3 is an unmanned mission. There are no astronauts onboard.

On performing a reverse image search of the video’s keyframe, we came across a trailer of the Hollywood film Transformer 3 uploaded on the verified YouTube channel ‘moviemaniacsDE’ on December 10, 2010. The viral clip appears in the trailer after 1.10 minutes.

We also found the same visuals in the trailer of Transformer 3 published by another YouTube channel ‘Rotten Tomatoes Classic Trailers’ on June 18, 2014. The caption read, “Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011) Official Trailer.”

Hence, we conclude that the viral clip is from Transformers 3 - Dark of the Moon which is the third film of the series, released in 2011. The claim is false.