The Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), on Sunday, 4 August, released the first set of pictures of the Earth taken by Chandrayaan-2, India’s second lunar mission. This comes a few days after fake images were being circulated on social media as Earth’s photos from Chandrayaan-2.
The country’s second moon mission Chandrayaan 2 took off from Earth on Monday, 22 July, at 2:43 and has already completed four orbit raising manoeuvres.
- 01/05(Photo Courtesy: ISRO)
- 02/05(Photo Courtesy: ISRO)
- 03/05(Photo Courtesy: ISRO)
- 04/05(Photo Courtesy: ISRO)
- 05/05(Photo Courtesy: ISRO)
The Fake Chandrayaan-2 Photos
Earlier, on 27 July, few images of Earth from space had gone viral with the claim that they were the "first photograph of Earth" from the spacecraft.
The claim was shared with an image and read: "First photograph of earth, sent by Chandrayan 2..... What an eye-catching visual it is 👇 (sic)"
The Quint, after receiving a query on WhatsApp asking to verify the claim, found out that the claim made in the viral post was false as the images were not clicked by cameras aboard the Chandrayaan-2.
The image, in fact, had been posted on multiple platforms over the years.
In a 2017 tweet, the image was tweeted by one user saying that it was “Antarctica from space, attributing the image to NASA.
After analysing the tweets, it was found that the image is an illustration from 2016.
On digging further, we found out that an article from 2005 reveals that the picture is actually visualisation of data – a computer-generated image showing the extent of sea ice around Antarctica on 21 September 2005.
The other picture that has been shared with Chandrayaan-2 claims has been circulated on the internet for years now. Now, that image was posted on imgur, an online image sharing community, in 2017 with the caption "NASA captures a picture of Guatemala's Fuego volcano erupting from space".
The Telegraph had also carried a story on a photo gallery named 'Erupting volcanoes photographed from space' and according to that article, the image was taken by astronauts aboard the International Space Station (ISS) of a large plume of smoke, steam and ash erupting from the Sarychev volcano on the Kuril Islands, Russia.
The rest of the pictures that were being shared with the claim had also been also posted and circulated on the internet before the launch of the Chandrayaan-2 spacecraft – something that can be found with a simple Google reverse image search.
Chandrayaan-2 Will Land on the Moon on 20 August
The Chandrayan-2 spacecraft is set to land on the south pole of the moon by 20 August. It performed its first Earth-raising orbit manoeuvre on 24 July. The second came on 26 July, third on 29 July and the fourth manoeuvre was completed successfully on 2 August.
The launch on 22 July took place from the Satish Dhawan Space Station in Sriharikota after the initial 15 July launch was delayed due to a technical snag in the launch vehicle, the GSLV Mk-III.
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