Fact Check: Video shows NASA’s Perseverance rover on Mars, not Chandrayaan-3 on moon

Hyderabad: A video showing robotic machinery on a barren desert-type land is doing rounds on social media, with users claiming it to be the first video of Chandrayaan-3 on the moon released by the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO).

A Facebook user shared the video with the caption, “ISRO has released the video that the whole world is waiting for. This is the video recorded by the camera mounted on the Chandrayaan-3 lander while it was landing on the moon. While this video started a few km before the lander landed on the moon, it was recorded until it landed on *MOON*. So far ISRO has released only the photos taken by the lander, but this is the first time that a video of the process of landing on the moon has been released. (sic)”

Fact Check

NewsMeter found that the video shows NASA’s Perseverance rover on Mars. It has no links with the Chandrayaan-3 mission to the moon.

On performing a reverse image search of the video’s keyframe, we found the image of the rover as seen in the video posted by the official X handle of NASA’s Astrobiology. As per the caption, it was posted on the first anniversary of Perseverance’s landing on Mars.

The caption also stated that the rover was sent to investigate the ancient microbial life on the red planet.

Taking this as a cue, we ran a keyword search and found a video published by the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory YouTube channel titled “NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover Milestones - 2021 Year in Review.” At 0.35 seconds in the video, it shows the same visual of the rover as seen in the viral video.

It was published on December 29, 2021, and talks about the accomplishment of NASA’s Perseverance rover after landing on the surface of Mars in February 2021.

Hence, we conclude that the viral video shows NASA’s Perseverance rover on Mars, not Chandrayaan-3 on the moon. The claim is false.