Lal, Mursan & Hilsa are Craters on Mars named after Towns of Bihar and UP and Indian Physicist.

Science and Technology

Lal, Mursan and Hilsa are three craters on the surface of Mars, discovered by Ahmedabad's Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), that could hold proof that there was water on the red planet at some point in the past. ​The biggest crater of the three - Lal - has been named after the late Professor Devendra Lal, a legendary cosmic ray physicist from Varanasi and the director of PRL between 1972 and 1983.


      Mursan is named after a town in Uttar Pradesh's Hathras district, and Hilsa after a town in Bihar's Nalanda district.

      'Lal' - the largest - spans around 65km. It is covered with lava, but there is geophysical evidence of material other than lava in this crater with a 45m thick sedimentary deposit in the subsurface.

     

 

     


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