Fact Check: Dramatic video of asteroid exploding after landing on Moon is just CGI

A video that quickly went viral on social media purports to show the dramatic moment when an asteroid exploded upon impact with the Moon. The viral video shows an object falling freely. As soon as it hits the lunar surface, a gigantic explosion occurs, its blast radius increasing rapidly by the second.

A Facebook user shared this video and wrote: “Moon hit by an asteroid.” Similar posts can be seen here and here.

India Today found that this video is computer-generated and does not show a real incident.

OUR PROBE

Reverse searching frames from the viral video led us to an Instagram page called “The Deep Astronomy”. There, the video was shared on June 3 with the caption: “Asteroid Hitting The Moon (CGI).” It was credited to “diego.sinclair”.

Using this clue, we found the YouTube page of Diego Sinclair, who shared this clip as a YouTube Shorts on February 25. On the channel, we also found several other videos of asteroid impacts on the lunar surface. Some of them can be seen here, here, here, and here.

In the video’s comments section, Sinclair wrote: “NASA has shared videos of impacts on the moon, and there was a flash, but yeah this is just an edit.” In another comment, he wrote: “NASA has been sharing videos of impacts exploding on the moon for years. A Japanese scientist Daichi Fugii recently recorded some explosions from impacts on the moon too.”

On February 25, 2023, a Japanese astronomer called Daichi Fuji shared a video on Twitter that he claimed showed a meteorite’s impact with the Moon. Fuji, according to the Daily Mail, is head of astronomy at the Hiratsuka City Museum. He reportedly captured the footage from his home in Hiratsuka, Japan.

EXPLOSION ON MOON

As we mentioned in a previous fact-check story about Russia’s Luna-25 spacecraft crashing into the Moon, explosions are possible on the natural satellite. According to NASA, lunar meteors don't require oxygen or combustion to make themselves visible.

They hit the ground with such high kinetic energy that even a pebble can make a huge crater. The flash of light comes not from combustion but rather from the thermal glow of molten rock and hot vapours at the impact site.

It is, however, clear that the viral video of an asteroid striking the Moon was created using CGI.