Famed Queen guitarist and citizen astronomer Brian May collaborated with NASA's asteroid mission OSIRIS-REx, helping scientists find a suitable landing spot on the space rock that turned out to be completely different from what they had expected and designed their mission for.
May, who famously completed his PhD in astronomy in 2007 after a more than 30-year hiatus enforced by Queen's rise to fame in the early 1970s, sat down with Space.com to discuss his collaboration with the groundbreaking mission, NASA's first attempt to collect a piece of space rock and deliver it to Earth.
"Bennu: 3-D Anatomy of an Asteroid", authored by May and OSIRIS-REx principal investigator Dante Lauretta, is available in the U.S.from University of Arizona Press and in the U.K. from London Stereoscopic Company
May, who famously completed his PhD in astronomy in 2007 after a more than 30-year hiatus enforced by Queen's rise to fame in the early 1970s, sat down with Space.com to discuss his collaboration with the groundbreaking mission, NASA's first attempt to collect a piece of space rock and deliver it to Earth.
"Bennu: 3-D Anatomy of an Asteroid", authored by May and OSIRIS-REx principal investigator Dante Lauretta, is available in the U.S.from University of Arizona Press and in the U.K. from London Stereoscopic Company
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TechTranscript
00:00Hello everyone, my name is Teresa Polterva, I'm a senior writer at Space.com and today I have
00:04something really special for you. I'm here with Sir Brian May, the rock legend of Queen, who also
00:10happens to be a part-time astronomer and he was one of the scientists working with data and images
00:17coming from NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission. OSIRIS-REx was NASA's first mission to collect a sample from
00:25an asteroid and it will soon deliver this sample to Earth. And Sir Brian actually worked with Dante
00:32Loreta, OSIRIS-REx chief investigator, on a beautiful new book about asteroid Bennu and he is here now
00:41with us to tell us everything about this book and his collaboration with OSIRIS-REx. Thank you very
00:48much for finding time to talk to us, it's a great pleasure. So let me start at the beginning. Hugh and
00:54OSIRIS-REx, how did the two of you get together? Well quite informally really because I'm on the
01:00outside of NASA and nobody pays me to do this but I love it and I and my collaborator Claudia Manzoni
01:09generally go around the internet to find things which we can make into stereos because the data
01:16is all there from all these different missions from NASA, from ESA, from JAXA. There is enough data
01:22there to find viewpoints in order to make the stereo images which we crave. We just love making stereo
01:28images and of course then you have to use a viewer to appreciate them in 3D. And I mean I'm creator of
01:38the London Stereoscopic Company and we now make stereo viewers, we make 3D viewers. So what happened
01:46with me and Dante was I sent him just off the cuff a couple of his images which I'd made into 3D
01:52along with Claudia and he was amazed. He said I've never seen them like this, this is such a great tool
01:57and this might be able to help us find the landing site that we need in order to get our samples safely.
02:03And so we started to interact and we started to trade emails and pictures and from that point on I mean we
02:12we've become very good friends during the the passage of time but a lot of work because when it became
02:18serious we're not just making pretty pictures we're supplying them with images that they can view and
02:23make that crucial decision. Is this a flat enough site to land our spacecraft? Will it be safe? Will we get
02:29the sample back to Earth? So that's what I became engaged doing and a lot of work but very very happy work.
02:36Is there any particular reason why you are interested in this mission?
02:39I'm interested in them all. I was incredibly lucky to be involved in the New Horizons mission
02:46with Alan Stern who also kind of took me under his wing and I was able to help secure 3D pictures of
02:53Pluto. See no one had ever seen Pluto close up before so I was able to bring
02:58I think the universe's first 3D picture of Pluto to light and they went on to photograph an
03:06object in the Kuiper belts as you probably know. But yes Rosetta also we've made some
03:11lovely stereo images of maybe there's a book there too. I think the difference is that
03:17that Dante wanted to involve me and involve us at an early stage so that we could actually contribute
03:23to the conduct of the mission that's the crucial difference. I understand that you were actually
03:27called upon to help the team solve a major issue they had trying to find a suitable landing spot on
03:34the surface of an asteroid that looked very different than they expected it to. Do you remember
03:39how the atmosphere was among the scientists during this challenging time? Yeah well I think it was
03:46suddenly becoming much more difficult than they'd expected because Bennu wasn't a solid object with
03:52flat places it was a completely randomly accrued object it's a rubble pile and there are no places
03:59where it's safe to land apparently. There's only sort of different sizes of pebbles and it's very
04:06difficult to assess what the landing will actually be like if you can't be there and see it with your own
04:12eyes that's where this comes in handy because once you have a stereo image of that particular potential
04:17landing site you can really make an instinctive judgment as to whether things are going to work
04:22out or not you know how near is this boulder how much slope is there how dangerous is it to be to get
04:28it off and get on um so that's where we were able to get into it and I know that uh at one point
04:35Dante said look all my guys have to see this I've seen it this has changed my whole opinion I want my
04:40whole team to see this so I sent about a box of these and um everybody sat around the table I
04:45think and made those decisions looking at Bennu as if they were there. So can you explain to us how
04:51do you create these stereo images? Basically to make a stereo image you need two different viewpoints
04:57just as in real life when I look at you my left eye has a viewpoint and my right eye has a viewpoint
05:02slightly different I see more of your your cheek here be more of your cheek here and um that's the
05:08whole thing I mean I've said it there um what do you have to do in making a stereo image is to
05:14reproduce that effect so I have to take a picture from my left eye I have to take a picture for my
05:19right eye and then I put him in a viewer like like this in the situation where my left eye only sees the
05:25left image and my right eye only sees the right image then the effect is reproduced so I see this crater
05:33as if I were about a mile away from Bennu um but my eyes are about a hundred thousand miles apart no
05:41no not not that far delete that my eyes are about half a mile apart you know so how did the idea for
05:46the book come about we made so many images and um it was a labor of love and it was also very rushed
05:54and I remember saying to Dante we should do the book you know we have such an amazing collection of images
06:00not just of the details of the surface also of the of the um the whole planet which which is
06:06something very attractive and so we started to think of a book and we realized that it could be
06:12the the world's first opportunity to make a real atlas of of an asteroid so that's what we attempted to
06:19do and the fact that it has stereo images as well I think makes it something very very unique and special
06:25so who is the book uh aimed at who is the target audience the book is really aimed at anyone who
06:30has an interest in this kind of subject anyone who's interested in what they see when they look
06:34up in the night sky it's not just for scientists there's a lot of well there's a whole world of
06:39scientific information in there for anyone who wants it but if you read it as a story you should be
06:44able to understand it without prior knowledge