Queen Legend Brian May Talks NASA Asteroid Mission Collaboration In Exclusive Interview

Space.com

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

Transcript

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 object in

03:07the Kuiper belts as you probably know but yes Rosetta also we've made some lovely stereo images of maybe

03:13there's a book there too. I think the difference is that that Dante wanted to involve me and involve us

03:21at an early stage so that we could actually contribute to the conduct of the mission that's the crucial difference.

03:26I understand that you were actually called upon to help the team solve a major issue they had trying

03:32to find a suitable landing spot on the surface of an asteroid that looked very different than they

03:38expected it to. Do you remember how the atmosphere was among the scientists during this challenging time?

03:44Yeah well I think it was suddenly becoming much more difficult than they'd expected because Bennu wasn't a

03:50solid object with flat places it was a completely randomly accrued object it's a rubble pile and

03:58there are no places where it's safe to land apparently there's only sort of different sizes of pebbles and

04:06it's very difficult to assess what the landing will actually be like if you can't be there and see it

04:11with your own eyes that's where this comes in handy because once you have a stereo image of that particular

04:17potential landing site you can really make an instinctive judgment as to whether things are

04:21going to work out or not you know how near is this boulder how much slope is there how dangerous is it

04:27to be to get it off and get on um so that's where we were able to get into it and I know that

04:34at one point Dante said look all my guys have to see this I've seen it this has changed my whole opinion

04:39I want my whole team to see this so I sent about a box of these

04:43and everybody sat around the table I think and made those decisions looking at Bennu as if they

04:49were there so can you explain to us how do you create these stereo images basically to make a stereo

04:54image you need two different viewpoints just as in real life when I look at you my left eye has a

05:00viewpoint and my right eye has a viewpoint slightly different I see more of your your cheek here be more

05:06of your cheek here and um that's the whole thing I mean I've said it there um what you have to do in

05:13making a stereo image is to reproduce that effect so I have to take a picture from my left eye I have

05:18to take a picture for my right eye and then I put him in a viewer like like this in the situation where

05:23my left eye only sees the left image and my right eye only sees the right image then the effect is

05:30reproduced so I see this crater as if I were about a mile away from Bennu um but my eyes are about a

05:38hundred thousand miles apart no no no that far delete that my eyes are about half a mile apart

05:45so how did the idea for the book come about we made so many images and um it was a labor of love

05:52and it was also very rushed and I remember saying to Dante we should do the book you know we have such

05:58an amazing collection of images not just of the details of the surface also of the of the um the

06:04whole planet which which is something very attractive and so we started to think of a book

06:11and we realized that it could be the the world's first opportunity to make a real atlas of of an

06:17asteroid so that's what we attempted to do and the fact that it has stereo images as well I think

06:22makes it something very very unique and special so who is the book aimed at who is the target audience

06:28the book is really aimed at anyone who has an interest in this kind of subject anyone who's

06:32interested in what they see when they look up in the night sky it's not just for scientists there's a

06:37lot of well there's a whole world of scientific information in there for anyone who wants it

06:42but if you read it as a story you should be able to understand it without prior knowledge

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