KATHMANDU, DEC 14 -

The world’s highest mountain should not be hard to spot but American space agency NASA has admitted it mistook a summit in India for Mount Everest, which straddles the border of Nepal and China.

The agency said on its website that Russian cosmonaut Yuri Malenchenko’s snap from the International Space Station, 230 miles (370 kilometres) above Earth, showed Everest lightly dusted with snow.

The picture spread rapidly via Twitter and was picked up by media around the world, including the US-based magazine The Atlantic, astronomy website Space.com and US cable news channel MSNBC.But Nepalis smelt a rat and voiced their suspicions on social media. Journalist Kunda Dixit, an authority on the Himalayas, tweeted: “Sorry guys, but the tall peak with the shadow in the middle is not Mt Everest.”

NASA confirmed on Thursday that it had made a mistake and removed the picture from its website.

Posted on: 2012-12-14 08:05