by Decades-old photographs taken by the NASA space agency have resurfaced in posts that falsely claimed to have been taken by a satellite carrying China’s lunar probe Chang’e-6 in May 2024. The images were shared in a video online after Chinese state media reported that the probe – sent on a mission to collect samples from the far side of the Moon – had transmitted some initial data. The film also mistakenly included a photo from a European Space Agency (ESA) space mission that ended in 2016.
“Pakistan and France share video images captured with the help of China’s Chang’e-6,” read the simplified Chinese title of a clip posted on Chinese video sharing platform Bilibili on May 12, 2024.
The Chang’e-6 is a Chinese lunar probe that blasted off on May 3 on an unprecedented 53-day mission to collect samples from the far side of the moon. Pakistan’s The Nation newspaper reported that a satellite jointly developed by Pakistan and China – the ICUBE-Q – was also on board (archive link).
The video — which has been viewed more than 165,000 times — appears to show satellite footage of valleys and craters on the moon’s surface.
English text overlaid on the video reads: “Pakistan Reached the moon (sic) and some clips from Pakistani Setallite Alhamdulillah (sic). Pakistan Zindabad.”
The video circulated after the state news agency Xinhua reported that China had delivered data collected during the Chang’e-6 mission, including images taken by the ICUBE-Q satellite, to Pakistan (link archive).
The IS same video it was seen elsewhere on Chinese video sharing platforms Bilibili and Xigua Video alongside a similar false claim.
It was also viewed millions of times here on a Pakistan-based TikTok account with the English claim about a Pakistani satellite, but no mention of the Chang’e-6 probe.
However, the video does not show clips captured by the ICUBE-Q satellite.
A reverse keyword and image search on Google found that the falsely shared video is made up of some old photos of the Moon released by the US space agency NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA).
The video zooms in and crosses across these photos to give a sense of movement.
Program Apollo photos
Three photos in the video were taken during the Apollo missions in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and shared on the official NASA Flickr accounts here and here (archive links here and here).
The first image used in the falsely shared video is from a photo taken during NASA’s Apollo 10 mission in May 1969 (link in archive).
The following description reads: “Apollo 10 oblique northwest view of Triesnecker crater, centered near longitude 3.6 degrees east, and latitude 4 degrees north.”
Below is a screenshot comparison of the image used in the fake video (left) and the NASA photo (right), with the corresponding portion of the photo highlighted by AFP:
The second image used in the falsely shared video was taken during the Apollo 15 mission, which took place between July and August 1971 (archive link).
According to a caption alongside the same photo on NASA’s websiteit shows the Aristarchus Plateau, including Vallis Schröteri, and the craters Aristarchus and Herodotus (archive link).
Below is a screenshot comparison of the image used in the fake video (left) and the NASA photo (right), with the Match section highlighted by AFP:
The third image in the falsely shared video was taken during the Apollo 17 mission in December 1972, his final crewed mission to the Moon (archive link).
The caption reads: “A world (distant background) is seen above large lunar boulders (foreground) on the moon.”
Below is a screenshot comparison of the image used in the fake video (left) and the NASA photo (right), and the corresponding part of the photo highlighted by AFP:
Rosetta spacecraft photo
The last image in the falsely shared video was published on the ESA website, which says it was taken on September 30, 2016 (archive link).
It is captioned: “This image of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko was captured by Rosetta’s OSIRIS narrow-angle camera at 01:20 GMT from an altitude of about 16 km above the surface during the spacecraft’s final descent on September 30.”
ESA’s Rosetta spacecraft had pursued Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko for six billion kilometers over a decade as part of a mission to unravel the origins of the Solar System.
His odyssey came to a dramatic end in 2016 when he landed in the comet he had orbited and studied for two years.
In its final hours, Rosetta sent home crucial last-gap data collected from closer to the comet than ever before, sampling the comet’s gas, dust and plasma, and taking close-up pictures of the site of its icy tomb.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the image used in the fake video (left) and the ESA photo (right), and the corresponding part highlighted by AFP:
AFP has debunked further misinformation that emerged after the launch of the Chang’e-6 probe here and here.
