Asteroid 316201 named after Malala Yousafzai

April 11, 2015

Asteroid 316201 was named as ‘316201 Malala’ after the youngest Nobel laureate and girls’ education campaigner Malala Yousafzai.
The asteroid was named after her by Amy Mainzer, astronomer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, United States under the International Astronomical Union rules.
In 2010, Mainzer had discovered the asteroid which was known as 316201. As a discoverer of the asteroid she had owned the rights to name it.
Asteroid 316201 Malala is located in the Main Belt between Mars and Jupiter. It orbits around the Sun every 5.5 years and is more-than 2 mile wide.

About Malala Yousafzai

Malala was born on 12 July 1997 in Mingora city in Swat province of Pakistan.
At the age of 11 she had caught international attention as female education activist after writing for the BBC about life under the Taliban in Pakistan under pseudonym Gul Makai.
In 2012, Malala had survived an assassination attempt after she was shot in the head Taliban gunmen.
Awards- In 2014, at the age of 17 she was awarded Nobel peace prize, becoming youngest Nobel Laureate in the history of Nobel award. She had shared this prize with Indian children’s rights activist Kailash Satyarthi
She is also conferred with National Youth Peace Prize (2011), Mother Teresa Awards for Social Justice (2012), Simon de Beauvoir Prize (2013), Sakharov Prize for Freedom of Thought (2013), Anna Politkovskaya Award (2013) and many more.
United Nations has declared November 10 as ‘Malala Day’ in her honor.

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