Bangalore: The Indian space agency on Monday cautioned people on forged profiles about its Mars Orbiter Mission (MOM) on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter.
"It has come to our notice that a number of pages in the social media are floating in our name, department of space and Mangalyaan (Mars), which have no authenticity," the state-run Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said in a statement in Bangalore.
The Mars spacecraft, launched on November 5 from Sriharikota spaceport off the Bay of Bengal, about 80 km north east of Chennai, is cruising in the inter-planetary space through the 680-million km soar orbit to reach the red planet in September 2014.
A fortnight ahead of the maiden Mars mission, the space agency started an official page on Facebook Oct 22 titled 'ISRO's Mars Orbiter Mission' (facebook.com/isromom) to provide real time authentic information.
Asserting that it was not responsible for any content hosted on the forged pages, the space agency said the impersonation was a serious offence and warned of stern legal action against their administrators if they were not immediately shut.
Some of the fake sites on the social media are: www.facebook.com/isro.org, www.facebook/pages/ISRO-India-Space-Research-Organisation, twitter.com/Mangalyaan1, twitter.com/ISRO_India and twitter.com/ISROBhuvan.
