Video of army officials celebrating launch of Pakistan payload aboard Chinese lunar mission

Rating Justification

The iVerify Pakistan team has checked this content and has established that it is false.

To arrive at this verdict, the iVerify Pakistan team has sourced the original clip.

HOW IT STARTED

On May 6, 2024, iVerify Pakistan team was alerted to a post by the public regarding Pakistan Army personnel celebrating the successful launch of the country’s payload aboard a Chinese lunar mission and asked to authenticate the video.

The Facebook post was shared on May 3 by Urdu TV, self describing itself as a personal blog.

The caption for the post said: “Congratulations to Pakistanis for first successful satellite mission” and the attached video showed military personnel celebrating over something.

Notably, the post or the video did not have specific details such as the location of the video or its source since videos involving the military are usually only officially released through the army’s public relations wing.

The post gained 55,000 views on Facebook and was shared 1,300 times.

METHODOLOGY

The iVerify Pakistan team initiated an investigation into the claim due to its virality and to satisfy the public’s query whether the celebrations shown in the video were actually related to the lunar mission or not.

A team member recalled seeing the video before and that it was old. Subsequently, a keyword search was carried out for “Pak Army celebrating Pak win over Ind t20 world cup”.

The search yielded a video by media outlet 50 TV posted to its YouTube account on October 25, 2021, with the title: “Pakistan Army’s Soldiers celebrate the victory | pakistan vs india t20 world cup 2021| Cricket Match”.

Notably, the video showed an uncut clip of army personnel celebrating after Pakistan won their match against India on October 24, 2021, in the Twenty20 World Cup 2021.

The same video was shared by channel Pakistan Affairs on YouTube on October 25, 2021.

The team was not able to confirm the origin or source of the clip and neither was it covered by any larger mainstream news outlet.

However, this much was confirmed that it had nothing to do with the successful Chinese lunar mission.

BACKGROUND

As per Dawn, Pakistan’s maiden lunar mission — iCube Qamar — had embarked on its journey on May 3, 2024, as part of a Chinese probe, which aims to collect samples from the far side of the moon, a world first as Beijing pushes ahead with an ambitious programme that aims to send a crewed lunar mission by 2030.

China launched the uncrewed spacecraft on a nearly two-month mission. The Long March-5, China’s largest rocket, blasted off at 5:27pm Beijing time (0927 GMT) from Wenchang Space Launch Centre on the southern island of Hainan with the more than 8 tonnes Chang’e-6 probe.

The Chinese mission will employ lunar research payloads from multiple countries, including Pakistan’s iCube Qamar, which was designed by the Islamabad-based Institute of Space Technology in collaboration with China’s Shanghai University and Pakistan’s national space agency Suparco.

Separately, Pakistan had won their T20 World Cup 2021 match against India by 10 wickets with 13 balls remaining for a target of 152 runs.

CONCLUSION

The iVerify Pakistan team has determined that the claim regarding the video of army officials celebrating the Chinese satellite mission is false.

A longer uncut version of the video dates back to at least 2021 and is thus old, not having anything to do with current events or the Chinese moon mission.

Evidence and References

October 25, 2021, 50 TV YouTube video:
https://youtu.be/j13gyBDIvGE?si=zg6cG-gnyMvi-W48

October 25, 2021, Pakistan Affairs YouTube video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GnA0ItfeIg