Amid the conflict between India and Pakistan, the spread of misunderstanding and fake news has increased. Recently, an update has gone viral on social media, which mentioned that India’s largest spy satellite PSLV-C61 was destroyed due to the cyber attack by Pakistan.
While sharing this information, one of the social media users wrote, “Breaking: Pakistan claims, India's biggest spy satellite PSLV-C61 (EOS-09) failed due to Pakistan's cyber attack, rocket blasted in mid-way,” while another user from Pakistan mentioned, “Rocket science hacked. India's spy satellite launch failed due to a cyber attack.”
Not just these two, many social media accounts of Pakistanis have shared the similar claim.
The truth behind the viral post -
As the claim went viral on the social media, Truescoop News introduced investigation in the matter and following the detailed investigation it was revealed that this update is not true and was spread across the social media as a FAKE NEWS.
According to the results, the PSLV-C61 was launched on May 18 at 5:59 am from Satish Dhawan Space Center in Sriharikota. The initial/ ignition stage of the rocket was normal. As per the update by ISRO, the ignition of the rocket reached at the third stage at 262.9 seconds and when it reached at 344.9 seconds the telemetry data started showing errors, which resulted in a failed mission.
While addressing the issue, ISRO on May 18 mentioned, “Today was the 101st launch, PSLV-C61's performance was normal till the second stage. The mission could not be completed due to observation in the third stage.”
Fact Check -
The Pakistani claim regarding the failed mission due to Pakistani cyber attack was FAKE and the ISRO scientists were not able to pull the mission due to an issue during the ignition stage.