Chandrayaan-2: Fake Lander touchdown pics storm Twitter

Riding big on the Chandrayaan-2 drama, the fake news factory was on an overdrive on Sunday, trending fabricated images of the Lander’s ‘soft’ touchdown.

Twitter in particular went berserk with such images, with one showing a perfectly positioned Vikram ready to roll out the Rover.

Throughout Saturday, the Twitterati had lauded Isro's efforts, refusing to dub the mission’s final stage problems as a ‘failure.’

Visuals of Prime Minister Narendra Modi consoling Isro Chairman K Sivan with a hug have also gone viral.

But Sivan’s Sunday morning announcement that the Orbiter had located the Lander on the lunar surface took the celebrations to a different level.

Although Isro did not release any image captured by the Orbiter, screen grabs from a promotional animated video from the space agency were passed off as real.

At the forefront of this renewed hype was a Twitter handle @shivraj_Office, carrying the official Isro logo and a name as authentic as ‘ISRO Official Update.’

Its tweet read: “India is the 4th Nation to land on Moon and 1st Nation to land on Lunar Southpole. This is the best example of Hardwork and dedication always pays off.”

This 4 pm tweet instantly struck a chord with Indan space buffs. Without batting an eyelid, they liked it in droves. By 11 pm, that unverified information had 3,300 likes and 944 retweets. The accompanying fake image helped it trend further. #VikramLanderFound was among the top trends through Sunday.