Are These Thermal Images of Vikram Lander? No, They Are Old Photos

After the Chandrayaan-2 setback, ISRO has located the Vikram lander on the lunar surface.

A set of images are viral with the false claim that they are the thermal images of Vikram Lander.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

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CLAIM

After the Chandrayaan-2 setback, ISRO located the Vikram lander on the lunar surface on Sunday, 8 September.

The orbiter had clicked a thermal image of the Lander, ISRO Chief K Sivan informed, “There is no communication yet. We are trying to have contact. It will be communicated soon.”

Several images are now circulating of social media claiming to be the thermal image of the Vikram Lander.

IMAGE 1

On conducting a reverse image search on Google, we found that the image was taken on 23 August, by Terrain Mapping Camera of Chandrayaan-2. The image is available on the official website of ISRO which titled the image as ‘Moon as viewed by Terrain Mapping Camera.’

Also, the Twitter handle @Dkailasvadivoo is not the official Twitter handle of ISRO chief Dr K Sivan. The Quint spoke to an ISRO spokesperson who said Dr Sivan does not have an official twitter account.

Image taken by Terrain Mapping Camera of Chandrayaan-2.(Photo: Screengrab of website)

IMAGE 2

We found that the same image was uploaded on the official website of NASA in August 2017. The image caption states that the image is from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) image of landing site of Apollo 16.

Image of Apollo 16 landing site highlighted in yellow.(Photo: Screengrab of website)

IMAGE 3

(Photo: Screengrab of Twitter)

This too, is not the thermal image of Vikram Lander. A simple Google reverse image search showed that the image is from NASA’s Curiosity Rover mission. The image was tweeted by the official Twitter handle of Curiosity Rover on 12 July.

Curiosity, a rover sent to Mars, is a part of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission, and was launched on 26 November 2011. It landed on Mars at 10:32 pm PDT on 5 August, 2012. Curiosity was set out to explore whether Mars ever had the right environmental conditions to support small life forms called microbes.

The images circulated on social media are not that of thermal image of the Vikram Lander.

Earlier on Sunday, ISRO chief Sivan had told news agency ANI that a thermal image of the lander was taken by the orbiter.

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