Recently, the Canadian Space Agency, shared the image of a 108 million-year-old Tycho Crater in the Moon’s southern hemisphere. However, the imge of the crater left netizens bewildered after they spotted roads and buildings alongside the supposed crater.
The space agency shared the image of the crater on social media platform X and within a nick of time, it ended up at the centre of a controversy around the authenticity of the image of the supposed crater.
The caption of the image post said, “Boom! An impact crater is formed when an object like an asteroid or meteorite crashes into the surface of a larger solid object like a planet, or a moon! Here is Tycho Crater, in the Moon’s southern hemisphere, believed to be about 108 million years old.” The post credited NASA as the source of the photo.
What amused the netizens the most was the presence of human-made structures around the crater. The post also erupted humurous remarks and jokes on the Canadian Space Agency.
How did trucks and roads appeared on Moon?
After some time, it became clear that the image was mistakenly uploaded as that of Moon’s Tycho Crater. But it was actually of Barringer Meteor Crater located in Arizona, United States, a spot known to attract tourists. After the mistake, Canadian Space Agency immediately deleted the post. But it was too late, as the micro-blogging site was filled with tweets mocking the space agency for its mistake.
One X user shared the image of Barringer Meteor Crater and captioned it as ‘Actual photo of me on the moon, according to Canada’s Space Agency.’
“Canada’s Space agency just tried to pass off a photo of Arizona as a crater on the moon. Speaks volumes about Trudeau’s government,” tweeted another user.
“I find it disturbing that Canada has acquired a space agency at a time when Canadians can’t distinguish the Moon from Arizona,” tweeted user named CoolCzech.
“This isn’t April Fools, or is it in Canada? You realise this is an Earth crater with human development,” tweeted another user. At the end, the post was also flagged by X community notes. It said, “The location shown is not Tycho Crater but Meteor Crater. It is not on the Moon’s southern hemisphere, but on Earth, in Arizona, about an hour’s drive away from Flagstaff. It is not thought to be 108 million years old, but a mere 50,000 years old. And it has a visitor centre,” reported HT.
