Fact Check: Viral CGI video does not feature Chandrayaan-3 travelling to moon

Hyderabad: On July 14, India’s ISRO successfully launched Chandrayaan-3 into Earth’s orbit. Since the launch, several videos have been doing rounds on social media with misleading claims.

A computer-generated animation showing the separation of a rover from a rocket and subsequently travelling towards the lunar surface is being shared with the claim that it shows the Chandrayaan-3 lander reaching the moon.

Click here to see the post and here to access the archive of the post.

Fact Check

NewsMeter found that the claim is false.

On performing a reverse image search of the video’s keyframe, we came across an article published on autoevolution on April 16, 2022, which carried a still from the video. The article is titled ‘NASA’s Comet Rocket Is What Should Have Kickstarted the Colonization of the Moon.’

It also featured a video titled ‘NASA’s Lunar Outpost Heavy Lift Vehicle: The Comet Rocket,’ published by a YouTube channel, Hazegrayart, on March 25, 2022. At 3.36 minutes, the viral clip appears in the video.

The channel, in its description, said Comet Rocket was a proposed super heavy-lift launch vehicle designed for NASA’s First Lunar Outpost program, which was in the design phase from 1992-1993 for Space Exploration Initiative. The Space Exploration Initiative was cancelled in March 1993 after the completion of the proposal.

Hence, we conclude the viral video is a computer-generated animation featuring NASA’s proposed Comet Rocket.

Landing of Chandrayaan-3

The Chandrayaan-3 journey will last over a month before landing on the moon’s surface in late August. The ISRO chief said that the soft landing of Chandrayaan-3 is planned for 5.47 pm on August 23.