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

00:00 Hello everyone, my name is Teresa Poltelva.

00:01 I'm a senior writer at space.com.

00:03 And today I have something really special for you.

00:06 I'm here with Sir Brian May, the rock legend of Queen,

00:10 who also happens to be a part-time astronomer.

00:13 And he was one of the scientists working with data

00:17 and images coming from NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission.

00:21 OSIRIS-REx was NASA's first mission

00:23 to collect a sample from an asteroid,

00:25 and it will soon deliver this sample to Earth.

00:30 And Sir Brian actually worked with Dante Loretta,

00:33 OSIRIS-REx chief investigator,

00:36 on a beautiful new book about asteroid Bennu.

00:40 And he is here now with us to tell us everything

00:43 about this book and his collaboration with OSIRIS-REx.

00:47 Thank you very much for finding time to talk to us.

00:50 It's a great pleasure.

00:52 So let me start at the beginning.

00:53 You and OSIRIS-REx, how did the two of you get together?

00:57 Well, quite informally, really,

00:59 because I'm on the outside of NASA.

01:01 Nobody pays me to do this, but I love it.

01:05 And I and my collaborator, Claudia Manzoni,

01:10 generally go around the internet to find things

01:13 which we can make into stereos,

01:15 'cause the data is all there

01:16 from all these different missions,

01:18 from NASA, from ESA, from JAXA.

01:21 There is enough data there to find viewpoints

01:23 in order to make the stereo images which we crave.

01:27 We just love making stereo images.

01:29 And of course, then you have to use a viewer

01:31 to appreciate them in 3D.

01:34 And I mean, I'm creator of the London Stereoscopic Company,

01:40 and we now make stereo viewers.

01:42 We make 3D viewers.

01:43 So what happened with me and Dante

01:46 was I sent him just off the cuff a couple of his images,

01:50 which I'd made into 3D along with Claudia.

01:53 And he was amazed.

01:54 He said, "I've never seen them like this.

01:56 "This is such a great tool,

01:58 "and this might be able to help us find the landing site

02:00 "that we need in order to get our samples safely."

02:04 And so we started to interact,

02:06 and we started to trade emails and pictures.

02:10 And from that point on, I mean,

02:12 we've become very good friends during the passage of time,

02:15 but a lot of work, because when it became serious,

02:18 we're not just making pretty pictures.

02:20 We're supplying them with images that they can view

02:23 and make that crucial decision.

02:25 Is this a flat enough site to land our spacecraft?

02:28 Will it be safe?

02:29 Will we get the sample back to Earth?

02:31 So that's what I became engaged doing,

02:33 and a lot of work, but very, very happy work.

02:36 - Is there any particular reason

02:38 why you are interested in this mission?

02:40 - I'm interested in them all.

02:41 (laughs)

02:42 I was incredibly lucky to be involved

02:44 in the New Horizons mission with Alan Stern,

02:47 who also kind of took me under his wing,

02:49 and I was able to help secure 3D pictures of Pluto.

02:54 See, no one had ever seen Pluto close up before.

02:57 So I was able to bring, I think,

03:00 the universe's first 3D picture of Pluto to light,

03:04 and they went on to photograph an object

03:06 in the Kuiper belt, as you probably know.

03:09 But yes, Rosetta also, we've made some lovely stereo images.

03:13 Maybe there's a book there, too.

03:14 I think the difference is that Dante

03:18 wanted to involve me and involve us at an early stage

03:22 so that we could actually contribute

03:23 to the conduct of the mission.

03:25 That's the crucial difference.

03:26 - I understand that you were actually called up

03:28 to help the team solve a major issue they had,

03:31 trying to find a suitable landing spot

03:34 on the surface of an asteroid

03:35 that looked very different than they expected it to.

03:39 Do you remember how the atmosphere was

03:41 among the scientists during this challenging time?

03:45 - Yeah, well, I think it was suddenly

03:47 becoming much more difficult than they'd expected,

03:49 because Bennu wasn't a solid object with flat places.

03:53 It was a completely randomly accrued object.

03:56 It's a rubble pile, and there are no places

03:59 where it's safe to land, apparently.

04:01 There's only sort of different sizes of pebbles,

04:06 and it's very difficult to assess

04:07 what the landing will actually be like

04:09 if you can't be there and see it with your own eyes.

04:12 That's where this comes in handy,

04:14 because once you have a stereo image

04:16 of that particular potential landing site,

04:18 you can really make an instinctive judgment

04:20 as to whether things are gonna work out or not.

04:22 How near is this boulder?

04:24 How much slope is there?

04:25 How dangerous is it to be to get it off and get on?

04:29 So that's where we were able to get into it.

04:32 And I know that at one point,

04:35 Dante said, "Look, all my guys have to see this.

04:37 "I've seen it.

04:38 "This has changed my whole opinion.

04:39 "I want my whole team to see this."

04:41 So I sent about a box of these,

04:43 and everybody sat around a table, I think,

04:45 and made those decisions,

04:47 looking at Ben as if they were there.

04:50 - So can you explain to us

04:51 how do you create these stereo images?

04:53 - Basically, to make a stereo image,

04:55 you need two different viewpoints.

04:57 Just as in real life, when I look at you,

05:00 my left eye has a viewpoint

05:01 and my right eye has a viewpoint.

05:02 Slightly different.

05:03 I see more of your cheek here,

05:06 see more of your cheek here.

05:07 And that's the whole thing.

05:09 I mean, I've said it there.

05:10 What do you have to do in making a stereo image

05:14 is to reproduce that effect.

05:15 So I have to take a picture from my left eye,

05:17 I have to take a picture for my right eye,

05:19 and then I put him in a viewer, like this,

05:22 in a situation where my left eye only sees the left image

05:26 and my right eye only sees the right image.

05:28 Then the effect is reproduced.

05:31 So I see this crater as if I were about a mile away

05:34 from Ben-Hu,

05:35 but my eyes are about 100,000 miles apart.

05:40 No, not that far.

05:42 Delete that, my eyes are about half a mile apart.

05:45 So how did the idea for the book come about?

05:48 We made so many images and it was a labor of love.

05:52 And it was also very rushed.

05:54 And I remember saying to Dante, we should do the book.

05:57 We have such an amazing collection of images,

06:00 not just of the details of the surface,

06:01 also of the whole planet,

06:05 which is something very attractive.

06:08 And so we started to think of a book

06:10 and we realized that it could be the world's first

06:13 opportunity to make a real atlas of an asteroid.

06:18 So that's what we attempted to do.

06:19 And the fact that it has stereo images as well,

06:21 I think makes it something very, very unique and special.

06:25 So who is the book aimed at?

06:26 Who is the target audience?

06:28 The book is really aimed at anyone who has an interest

06:30 in this kind of subject,

06:32 anyone who's interested in what they see

06:33 when they look up in the night sky.

06:35 It's not just for scientists.

06:36 There's a lot of, well, there's a whole world

06:39 of scientific information in there for anyone who wants it.

06:42 But if you read it as a story,

06:43 you should be able to understand it without prior knowledge.

06:46 (upbeat music)

06:49 (dramatic music)

Category

Transcript

Recommended