India made history on Wednesday after their Chandrayaan-3 mission landed safely on the moon’s south pole, cementing itself as the first nation to successfully touch down on the largely unexplored region of the lunar surface.


“All the people of the world, the people of every country and region: India’s successful moon mission is not just India’s alone,” said India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi, reiterating that “this success belongs to all of humanity.”


But even with Modi’s broad, pseudo-inspirational attribution, not everyone was excited to take credit for the scientific feat — namely, the conspiracy theorists of Reddit who were irked with the bigfoot-esque quality of the spacecraft’s camera.



“So India just landed on the moon. Anyone think it's weird how the video quality is significantly worse than the U.S. footage from the 1960s?” asked u/SAT0725, who broached the topic on r/Conspiracy.


“Not saying the U.S. moon landing was b*****it, but ... how did we get such good footage 50 years ago and today's is garbage by comparison?” they continued.


India's ISRO releases footage from Chandrayaan-3's Camera. The apparatus is coasting 70km above moon's surface as it prepares for landing attempt on 23rd August.
by u/rocks_prateek in Damnthatsinteresting



Though several fellow redditors began debating this exact question in more detail on r/Damnthatsinteresting, with u/Mastercraft0 suggesting that the device “It probably also acts as a technical camera,” offering “images of if the solar panels looks okay and if it's in correct orientation with the moon etc etc,” the consensus largely remained the same — the video looked like a y2k video game.


“The pictures I’ve seen from India.. looks so AI-generated, it’s almost laughable,” added iu/FrankieSaysRelax311.


Though it’s unclear why such an advanced spacecraft may be lacking in the camera department, we can’t entirely blame them — as u/WuFlu_Tang_Clan so aptly observed, “They don't have Stanley Kubrick.”