A Facebook page impersonating Pakistan’s national space agency SUPARCO circulated at least three doctored satellite images in the days following the EO-3 launch on 25 April 2026, falsely presenting fabricated and recycled imagery as early outputs from the newly orbited satellite, according to open-source intelligence analysts.
EO-3 — formally designated PRSC-EO3 — was launched on 25 April 2026 from the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in China aboard a Long March 6 rocket. The satellite completed Pakistan’s PRSC-EOS Earth observation constellation, which SUPARCO developed as the final unit in its Pakistan Remote Sensing Satellite Electro-Optical System programme.
The fraudulent page, operating under the display name “Suparco,” presented itself as an official government body. It used SUPARCO’s logo, described itself as a government organisation headquartered in Islamabad, and had accumulated a significant following before analysts began documenting its activity. The imagery it posted was framed as EO-3’s early deliverables — photographic evidence that Pakistan’s newest Earth observation asset was already functional and capturing high-resolution views of strategic locations.
Analysts identified the page as likely fraudulent through several visible indicators. The contact email listed was a Gmail address. Pakistani government agencies are required to use .gov.pk domains for official correspondence. The page linked to an AI-generated website with no verifiable connection to the actual Space and Upper Atmosphere Research Commission. Its URL did not correspond to the verified SUPARCO Pakistan page, which carries substantially more followers, lists a .gov.pk email address, and links directly to suparco.gov.pk.
The fabrications fell into three distinct categories.
The first involved recycled imagery relabelled as new. An aerial view of Karachi Port was posted with metadata claiming capture by EO-3’s HRSS-2 sensor in 2026 at 0.8-metre resolution. Independent analysts traced the image to SUPARCO’s own website, where it had been published with an original date in 2024 — well before EO-3 had launched. The technical metadata had been applied fraudulently over an archived image the agency itself had previously published.
The second involved location misrepresentation combined with AI fabrication. An image captioned as Gwadar, Balochistan, showed what appeared to be a commercial shipping port. Analysts identified the underlying photograph as depicting the Ormara Naval Base, approximately 130 kilometres east of Gwadar along the Balochistan coast. The shipping terminal visible in the image was assessed as AI-generated. Naval infrastructure had apparently been digitally replaced with commercial port facilities that have no physical counterpart at that location.
The third involved metadata spoofing on repurposed public imagery. An image purporting to show Islamabad’s Faisal Mosque Complex carried metadata identifying it as remotely sensed data from Pakistan’s PakTES-1A satellite, at one-metre resolution, captured in 2024. Analysts matched it against publicly available mapping imagery from 2025. Vehicles, shadows, and individuals appeared in identical positions across both images. The satellite attribution was fabricated; the underlying image was public-source mapping data.
None of this imagery originated from EO-3. SUPARCO has not released comprehensive technical specifications for EO-3, and its precise resolution, swath width, and spectral band configuration remain publicly unconfirmed. Whatever the satellite is capable of producing, its actual imagery was not what circulated on the fake page.
The fraudulent page generated meaningful spread before the analytical community caught up, with Pakistani users accepting the imagery as authentic. Comments beneath the posts showed some users accepting the photographs as genuine, while others questioned their provenance — questions that went unanswered.
The episode illustrates how technically specific fabrications — sensor designations, coordinate labels, resolution figures — can bypass casual scrutiny. The Gwadar image, in particular, involved the creation of infrastructure that does not physically exist, suggesting a deliberate and reasonably sophisticated operation rather than simple relabelling.
SUPARCO had not, at the time of publication, issued any public statement distinguishing its legitimate communications from the fake page’s content. EO-3 is a genuine satellite — SUPARCO states it was fully designed, developed, and built at its Satellite Research and Development Centre, and the engineering achievement is real. In the absence of verified imagery from the actual satellite, the space left open by institutional silence was filled by fabrications that circulated long enough to reach a wide audience unchallenged.