Chandrayaan updates: The Vikram lander reached Moon after a 40-day journey.
The entire world is congratulating India for the success of Chandrayaan-3, which landed in the south pole region of the Moon - a feat that wasn't achieved till now. The success was celebrated with cheers and applause at the ground station. But fake messages too started spreading on social media and were widely circulated on WhatsApp and other platforms online. As ISRO scientists waited for the right time for the Pragyan rover to come out of the Vikram lander but social media users already rolled out an image of the two payloads on the lunar surface.
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Another fake video spreading fast shows Vikram on the Moon's surface and a blue Earth rising in the background. In the caption, some users claimed that it was clicked by a NASA satellite.
The American space agency was again roped in, when a video claimed to show the entire landing of Vikram ac captured by a NASA satellite. When we fact-checked the rapidly spreading video, it turned out to be of the Apollo-11 landing on the Moon years ago.
Taking it a step further, some users posted image of the lion capital of King Ashoka - the official emblem of India - along with the ISRO logo within the tread marks, which they claimed are of the rover.
And some of these images were posted even before Chandrayaan-3's landed touched down on the lunar surface.
The stated objectives of Chandrayaan-3, India's third lunar mission, are rover moving on the Moon's surface, and in-situ scientific experiments.
Chandrayaan-3's development phase commenced in January 2020, with the launch planned sometime in 2021. However, the Covid-19 pandemic caused a delay to the mission's progress.