No, these Moon images don't show Chandrayaan-2's Vikram Lander

On Sunday, fake images of Chandrayaan-2's Vikram Lander started circulating on social media after ISRO chief K Sivan said the space agency has located the lander on the lunar surface and is trying to establish contact.

Sivan said the Chandrayaan-2 orbiter managed to click a "thermal" image of the lander. This led to several people sharing random space exploration images claiming them to be that of the Vikram Lander. Jonathan O'Callaghan, a UK-based freelance journalist who writes on space and climate-change, said one of the widely shared images is of NASA's Curiosity.

"Also just quickly, I'm seeing this image shared a lot too claiming it is the #VikramLander on the Moon. It is not, it is NASA's Curiosity rover on Mars," he tweeted along with the accompanying picture.

The image, in fact, was taken from space on May 31, 2019 by the HiRISE camera aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter where the Curiosity rover appears as a blue-ish speck.

"Passing the MV Act amendment is a big achievement for our government. The high fines will lead to transparency, and (will) not result in corruption," Gadkari said.

After the act came into effect, a two-wheeler rider was fined Rs 23,000 in Gurugram for various norms violations, while a truck driver was issued challan for Rs 59,000.

Gadkari had earlier stressed that there should be no fear of hefty "challans" if someone is abiding by the law.

Another picture that is being widely circulated as that of Vikram Lander is of NASA's Apollo 15 lunar landing site.

As of now, ISRO has not shared any thermal image of the Vikram Lander either on its Twitter handle or on its official website. A thermal image is produced by capturing infrared radiations coming from an object and it uses temperature differences to map a picture rather than colour.

(inputs From The Indian Express)