A screenshot of a comment made by a reader beneath an article by the Washington Post about Chandrayaan-3 has been falsely shared to claim that the publication praised India's successful lunar mission. BOOM found that the text shows a user comment under a story by the Post, not an excerpt from their article.
India became the first country to land on the moon's south pole after it successfully deployed its Vikram lander on the lunar surface on August 23, 2023. The lunar mission dubbed Chandrayaan-3 was watched LIVE by millions across the globe and put India in an elite club of countries to land on the moon.
The historic feat has also triggered a flurry of misinformation online.
A screenshot from the Washington Post's website is being shared in this context to claim that the publication commended India for achieving such remarkable success despite their recruits not hailing from the top engineering and science colleges in the country.
The text reads, "The number of women engineers in the Mission Control was inspiring. In traditional clothes, with dots on the forehead and flowers on the hair, speaking in British accent English, careful to avoid "grammar mistakes" giving the commentary, calling out status reports... Another important thing is all those engineers were from the so called "second string" engineering colleges of India. The graduates of top engineering schools, the prestigious IITs and IISc were largely absent. The first echelon of Indian Engg talent is scooped up by the likes of Apple, Google, Amazon and Microsoft, the big multinational companies and prestigious MBA schools. It shows the DEPTH of talent in India. It can afford to give away the top batch and still have enough left over to soft land a space craft in the Moon!"
A caption on Facebook reads, "Look what The Washington Post has to say on Chandrayaan 3 success? Wonderful!"
Click here to view the post and here for an archive.
The post is also circulating on X (formerly Twitter) with the same misleading claim.
Click here to view the post and here for an archive.
FACT-CHECK
BOOM found that the text shows a comment made by a reader and is not an excerpt from the Washington Post's story about Chandrayaan-3.
Taking a cue from the name above the text, SandersRavilyn, we ran a keyword search on Google and found a story by the Post published on August 24, 2023, a day after Chandrayaan-3 landed on the moon. The piece was titled 'India’s lunar landing leaves a nation enthralled and briefly unified'
We went through the comments under this piece and found the one posted by Sanders Ravilyn.
The original article talks about Chandrayaan-3's landing and how it positions India in the global landscape of space research, India's internal struggles and challenges, and the criticism of its space program, among other things. It does not mention anything about ISRO's talent, or the background of project director P Veeramuthuvel.
According to The Hindu and The New Indian Express, P Veeramuthuvel completed his schooling from the railway school in his hometown of Villupuram, Tamil Nadu, after which he pursued a diploma in mechanical engineering, an undergraduate degree from Chennai, a postgraduate from the Regional Engineering College in Tiruchi and finally a PhD from IIT Madras while working at ISRO.