Is this a video of the Lunar surface captured by Chandrayan 3? Know the truth.

Chandrayan 3 landed on the moon on 23 August. After that, the Pragyan rover started sending images of various locations on the moon. Many social media users are sharing images and videos claiming the visuals to be of the moon sent by Chandrayan 3. Fact Crescendo previously debunked many such videos. 

Currently, another video is going viral on social media. The black-and-white video shows the barren lands of a heavenly body. It was claimed that this was the first video sent by Chandrayan 3 from the moon. 

However, Fact Crescendo found the claim to be false. This is an old video of Mars sent by the Curiosity rover. These visuals are not of the moon. 

Social media users are sharing this video claiming, “Chandrayan 3 sent its first video from the Moon. See the amazing view of the moon.”

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Fact Check- 

First, we looked at the viral video carefully. We saw many instances where it was mentioned that this is a video of Mars captured by the Curiosity rover. At another timeframe (0.25 minutes), it was mentioned that an ancient pond that existed on Mars millions of years ago was captured by the Curiosity rover. 

We know that the name of the rover of the Lunar mission is Pragyan rover and not the Curiosity rover. This raised our suspicion of the authenticity of the claim. 

To get more clarity, we searched for the Curiosity rover mission on YouTube. We found a video uploaded on a YouTube Channel on 8 August 2023. The description of the video reads, “NASA’s Mars Rover Curiosity sent latest Live captured remarkable stunning 360-degree real panorama images in 4k resolutions from Mars Planet during the Mars 2023 missions. All panoramic scenes made up of several images of Mars taken by onboard Mast cameras (panoramic cam) on sol 3899 and 3090 during the NASA Mars mission.”

In the above video, we can see the visuals of the viral video from 0.19 minutes to 4.13 minutes. Upon comparing the viral video with the YouTube video, we found a few similarities between them. In both the videos we can see the same oval-shaped crater and rock structures. Below you can see the comparison. 

We found a zoom-out image of a scene from the viral video on NASA’s website as well. According to the information, this image was captured by Curiosity Rover in a location named Jau on Mars on 25 July 2023. This image is of a crater which was captured on the 3,899^th Martian day of the mission. The width of the crater is 60 feet or 18 meters. This video was made up of 129 images that were sent back to the Earth by the Curiosity rover. 

Conclusion: 

Fact Crescendo found the claim to be false. The viral video is from Mars that was captured by NASA’s Curiosity rover and not of the moon. Video from Mars was falsely shared as visuals captured by Chandrayan 3 from the Moon.