If you go to Google maps and search 16°51?53?N and 11°57?13?E something pretty cool happens: you're taken to a place in the middle of the Sahara Desert. Zoom in and you would see a compass with the image of an airplane in the middle.

And that's not an icon.

The image is actually a giant tribute to all the passengers and crew who lost their lives in a plane crash more than two decades ago.

UTA Flight 772

UTA Flight 772 memorial. (Image source: Google Maps)

Although it's not the anniversary of the UTA Flight 772 explosion that led to a crash that killed about 170 people on board, the aerial image that most will only ever see thanks to Google's satellite images is going viral now none the less.

Flight 772 from Brazzaville in the Republic of Congo to Chad to Paris went down in Niger on Sept. 19, 1989, after a briefcase bomb planted by Libyan terrorists was detonated.

NIGER-AIRPLANE ACCIDENT

The cabin of the UTA DC 10 flight 772 lays on the Tenere desert after the passenger plane exploded on September 19, 1989, killing all 171 people aboard. (PASCAL GUYOT/AFP/Getty Images)

The memorial was created in 2007 by an association dedicated to the crash victim's families. It features a DC10 airplane, the model that went down, in black rock inside the compass pointed in the direction of its intended flight path.

UTA Flight 772

A look at UTA Flight 772?s memorial from the ground. (Image source: Imgur)

Check out touching images of the memorial being constructed from stone.

(H/T: Viral Nova)

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