A video shows a Russian space rocket being hit by lightning.
This isn’t a real video, but a CGI creation. A Russian Soyuz rocket was struck by lightning during a satellite launch in May 2019, and this video is a digital depiction of that.
A video is being shared online with claims it shows a Russian rocket being hit by lightning and continuing to ascend. Although this did reportedly happen, the clip featured in the post is not genuine and was created with CGI.
The footage has been circulating on social media, including on X (formerly Twitter), and Facebook with captions saying: “Russian rocket gets struck by lightning and keeps going.”
Another Facebook post states that the video shows a “Russian Soyuz rocket”, which was “struck by lightning during its launch from Plesetsk Cosmodrome”.
This incident did reportedly occur during the launch of a Glonass-M navigation satellite in May 2019. Real footage of the strike was shared on X at the time by then-Roscosmos (Russia’s space agency) Director General Dmitry Rogozin.
However, a reverse image search of stills from the video being shared recently, which differs from the one posted by Mr Rogozin, shows it was uploaded to YouTube in January 2022, with the caption: “on May 27, 2019 a Russian Soyuz rocket carrying a Glonass navigation satellite was hit by lightning and still successfully reached orbit. CGI animation.”
Before sharing a video online, it’s important to consider whether it comes from a reliable and verifiable source. Our toolkit can help you better assess information you see on social media.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as altered because although lightning did strike a Russian Soyuz rocket in 2019, this video is CGI.
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