Old panorama by NASAs Curiosity rover circulates online with false claims about Perseverance Mars rover
Old panorama by NASA's Curiosity rover circulates online with false claims
(AFP) - A video has been viewed tens of thousands of times in Twitter, Facebook and Weibo posts alongside a claim it shows visual footage and sound captured by NASA’s Perseverance rover during the US space agency’s latest Mars mission in February 2021. The claim is false: the video was actually created with a panorama captured by NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover in 2019.
The video was published on Facebook on February 20, 2021. It has been viewed more than 500 times.
Part of the post’s traditional Chinese caption translates o English as: “The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) [Perseverance] landed safely on Mars on February 18. Minutes after landing, the rover sent back this footage showing the surface of Mars.”
The post was circulated shortly after NASA’s Perseverance rover landed successfully on Mars on February 18, 2021.
The video was also shared tens of thousands of times alongside similar claims on Facebook, Twitter and Weibo.
The claim, however, is false.
A keyword search on Google found a panorama published on NASA’s website on March 4, 2020.
The caption of the panorama reads: “Curiosity’s 1.8-Billion-Pixel Panorama: NASA’s Curiosity rover captured its highest-resolution panorama of the Martian surface between Nov. 24 and Dec. 1, 2019. A version without the rover contains nearly 1.8 billion pixels; a version with the rover contains nearly 650 million pixels. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS.”
The panorama corresponds with details from the misleading video.
Below are three screenshot comparisons between the misleading video (L) and the panorama captured by NASA’s Curiosity rover (R):
