After the fateful crash of the Luna-25 spacecraft (here and here), which occurred after it moved into an unpredictable orbit, a video has surfaced on the internet claiming to be the visuals of the crash. Let’s fact-check this claim through this article.
Claim: A video of the Luna-25 spacecraft crash landing on the moon’s surface.
Fact: The Russian space agency Roscosmos State Space Corporation has not released official footage of the Luna-25 crash landing. Also, the image of the moon seen in the viral video is a screengrab of a 3D model of the moon created by NASA. Hence the claim made in the post is False.
Firstly to check if any of the news reports about the Luna-25 spacecraft’s crash landing contained the viral video, we performed a keyword search on the internet. This search did not lead us to any credible sources (except for photos of the moon sent by the spacecraft). The official statement of the Russian space agency also did not include any video.
Furthermore, a reverse image search on Google using a few keyframes from the viral clip revealed that this is a screengrab from a 3D visualisation of the moon created by “NASA science Visualiser Ernie Wright.”
NASA explains the video: ‘ Set to Claude Debussy’s Clair de Lune, this visualization uses Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter data to show the stark beauty of evolving light and shadow near sunrise and sunset on the rugged lunar surface. Music performed by Timothy Michael Hammond, distributed by Killer Tracks.’ The frame that appears at 2:10 sec in this video is the same one that’s in the viral video. The viral video was created using this frame and an additional element that looks like a spacecraft.
To sum up, an unrelated edited video is being shared on social media claiming it to be the visuals that show the crash landing of the Luna-25 spacecraft on the moon’s surface.
