Fact-Check: Video Doesn't Show Astronaut Jumping From Spacecraft
This 2012 video shows skydiver Felix Baumgartner free falling from a helium balloon and parachuting to Earth.
Fact-check: The video shows a skydiver and not an astronaut.
(Photo: Altered by The Quint)
A video claiming to show an Austrian astronaut jumping from a spacecraft to reach Earth is going viral on social media.
The claim also states that he travelled for 1,236 kilometres to reach Earth in approximately four minutes and five seconds.
It also states that he saw the planet rotating.
An archive can be seen here.
(Archives of similar claims can be seen here and here. )
What's the truth?: This was a part of the high-altitude skydiving project called Red Bull Stratos, which happened in 2012.
It shows Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner performing a freefall from a helium balloon and landing on Earth using a parachute.
How did we find out the truth?: We conducted a reverse image search on some of the keyframes of the video and found the original video from 2012.
We noticed The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC)'s logo on the top left corner of the video.
The video was uploaded by BBC Studio.
We found a longer version of the video was uploaded by the official channel of BBC Studio on 17 March 2016.
The description read that Felix Baumgartner performed a 'space dive', and this video was taken from Red Bull Space Dive.
We found another video from the official channel of Red Bull uploaded on 15 October 2012.
The description of the video showed Baumgartner freefalling from a helium-filled balloon after flying to an altitude of approximately 39 kilometres.
This video showed more clips starting from the release of the balloon, which took the skydiver up into space.
At the 0:56 timestamp, the video showed similar clips from the viral video.
Comparison between the viral video and the YouTube video.
Comparison between the viral video and the YouTube video.
What was this project about?: According to BBC, the skydiving project called Red Bull Stratos with BBC Studios happened on 14 October 2012.
Baumgartner jumped from 27,852.4 feet from the helium-filled balloon and attained a speed of 1,357.6km/h.
According to Guinness World Records, he became the first person to break the sound barrier in freefall with a final Mach number recorded as 1.25.
What is a 'space dive'?: Space diving is when a diver jumps from an aircraft or spacecraft towards Earth from the stratosphere.
Conclusion: A supersonic freefall video of a skydiver is being falsely shared as an astronaut jumping from space.
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