Last year many villages in Nepal were hit by the devastating earthquakes. Among all the villages Langtang was the worst affected village, as a minimum of 215 people were killed when the village was submerged due to avalanche created by a massive earthquake. Therefore a crater on Mars which is 10 kilometre wide has been named after the village Langtang, which was a popular trekking site in Nepal.
On June 14 the name was approved by the International Astronomical Union Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature. According to Tjalling de Haas, the researcher behind this move, it was a tribute to the Nepali village.
BBC was told by Tjalling de Haas, who studies Mars’s physical geography at Utrecht University in the Netherlands, that his colleague had worked there while studying Himalayan glaciers so he chose the name Langtang. He also said that it was his base camp for a long period, so we said maybe it’s a nice tribute to call the crater Langtang. The crater is said to have a diameter of 9.8 kilometres. Along with Langtang, three other craters on the planet were named Bunnik, Nqutu, and Talu respectively. Last year nearly 9000 people were killed by the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that had hit Nepal in April devastating the Himalayan country.