Malala Yousafzai has quickly become one of the most important women on the planet for so many reasons and it is only right that her influence should reach interstellar proportions.
The youngest Noble Peace Prize recipient in history now has a 2-mile-wide asteroid named after her. The asteroid called, 316201 Malala, orbits the sun every five and a half years in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, according to TIME.
Amy Mainzer, the woman who named the asteroid for Malala, recently wrote about her the choice on the Malala Fund Blog. “If anyone deserves to have an asteroid named after them, she does! My postdoctoral fellow Dr. Carrie Nugent brought to my attention the fact that although many asteroids have been named, very few have been named to honor the contributions of women (and particularly women of color).”
We agree and hope that Malala will be the first of many women to join the asteroid party.
Image c/o AP