A Facebook (FB) page posted as breaking news a six-month-old report on a Chinese space rocket being launched from a sea platform. This is misleading.
The post with the photos, published on June 16, bore this caption:
“Breaking: China launches most powerful solid fuel rocket
A Chinese company has launched its first heavyweight commercial rocket from the deck of a ship, reviving a concept popularized by the Sea-Launch consortium in the 1990s. Orienspace, based in Shandong, launched its first Gravity-1 rocket from the deck of a specially-adapted heavy lift ship in the Yellow Sea on Thursday.”
A Filipino netizen commented that the rocket was a ploy to scare Filipinos, amid the heightened tension between the Philippines and China in the West Philippine Sea.
Cursory search shows that the blurb’s text originated from a report published by The Maritime Executive on Jan. 14, 2024. The report talks about the Jan. 11 launch of the space rocket Gravity-1, created by Chinese aerospace enterprise Orienspace.
Gravity-1, which was launched from a ship deck in the Yellow Sea, deployed three Yunyao-1 commercial weather satellites into low-earth orbit, according to online publication space.com.
One of the photos in the misleading FB post appeared in the article by The Maritime Executive. Three other photos are screenshots from a video from space.com showing the actual rocket being launched from the Yellow Sea.
Click the photos in the infographics to reveal the original source:
FB page War Today, which claims to give updates on the Russia-Ukraine conflict, published the misleading post which garnered a total of over 4,052 reactions, 1,288 comments, and 198 scares.
The claim appeared after China completed its first propulsion system test for the Long March-10 rocket bound for the moon.