| schema:text
| - Fact Check: This is not an Australian astronaut jumping from spaceship to Earth
A video along with the claim that it shows an Australian astronaut jumping to Earth from a spaceship in four minutes is circulating on social media. However, AFWA has found the claim to be misleading
Listen to Story
India Today Fact Check
This is Felix Baumgartner, an Austrian skydiver jumping from the stratosphere. It took him 10 minutes to cover 1,28,100 feet and he did not leap from the official edge of space which is 100 km further up.
A video is circulating on social media along with the claim that it shows an Australian astronaut jumping to Earth from a spaceship in four minutes.
The caption of the video says, “An Australian astronaut jumped from space ship at an unbelievable height of 1,28,000 feet reaching surface of earth in just over 4 minutes and 5 seconds after travelling 1,236 kms. He could see the earth revolving — watch the amazing video by BBC. Enjoy this exotic free fall and imagine yourself in his place. It’s beautiful...”
India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) has found the claim to be misleading. The video shows Austrian skydiver Felix Baumgartner jumping from the stratosphere. With this jump, Baumgartner made the record of being the first skydiver to go faster than the speed of sound.
The archived versions of similar posts can be seen here, here and here.
AFWA probe
Closely observing the 4-minute-16-second video, we noticed “RED BULL STRATOS MISSION CONTROL, ROSWELL, NEW MEXICO” written in the background of a control room that can be seen at multiple instances in the video.
At 3 minutes and 35 seconds into the video, a man can also be heard saying, “Felix, we are really proud of you. You are absolutely fabulous.” The video also has a BBC watermark.
Taking clues from these, we did a keyword search and found the same video in a BBC article published on October 14, 2012.
According to the article, the video shows Austrian daredevil Felix Baumgartner jumping from 1,28,100 feet above New Mexico. He thus became “the first skydiver to go faster than the speed of sound, reaching a maximum velocity of 833.9mph,” says the report. The report also says that the skydiver took 10 minutes for his descent from the stratosphere.
We also found reports confirming that Baumgartner did not leap from the official edge of space which is 100 km further up.
Baumgartner’s jump was sponsored by energy drink company Red Bull under its “Red Bull Stratos” mission. The official YouTube channel of Red Bull also uploaded a video of Baumgartner’s jump that can be seen here.
In October 2014, according to a report by “The New York Times”, Alan Eustace, who was then a senior vice-president of Google, broke Baumgartner’s record of high altitude jump by covering 1,35,890 feet in 15 minutes.
Hence, it is clear that the video in question shows a skydiver jumping from the stratosphere as part of “Red Bull Stratos” mission and not an astronaut jumping from spaceship to Earth.
Please share it on our at 73 7000 7000
You can also send us an email at factcheck@intoday.com
|
![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
![[cxml]](/fct/images/cxml_doc.png)
![[csv]](/fct/images/csv_doc.png)
![[text]](/fct/images/ntriples_doc.png)
![[turtle]](/fct/images/n3turtle_doc.png)
![[ld+json]](/fct/images/jsonld_doc.png)
![[rdf+json]](/fct/images/json_doc.png)
![[rdf+xml]](/fct/images/xml_doc.png)
![[atom+xml]](/fct/images/atom_doc.png)
![[html]](/fct/images/html_doc.png)