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 Polterova, 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
00:18coming 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. Sir Brian actually worked with Dante
00:32Loretta, OSIRIS-REx chief investigator, on a beautiful new book about asteroid Bennu and he
00:40is here now with us to tell us everything about this book and his collaboration with OSIRIS-REx.
00:48Thank you very much for finding time to talk to us, it's a great pleasure.
00:52So let me start at the beginning, you and OSIRIS-REx, how did the two of you get together?
00:58Well quite informally really, because I'm on the outside of NASA and nobody pays me
01:03to do this, but I love it and I and my collaborator Claudia Manzoni generally go
01:11around the internet to find things which we can make into stereos, because the data is all there
01:17from all these different missions, from NASA, from ESA, from JAXA, there is enough data there
01:22to 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
01:38creator of the London Stereoscopic Company and we now make stereo viewers, we make 3D viewers.
01:44So what happened with me and Dante was I sent him just off the cuff a couple of his images
01:50which I'd made into 3D along with Claudia and he was amazed, he said I've never seen them like this,
01:56this is such a great tool and this might be able to help us find the landing site that we need
02:01in order to get our samples safely and so we started to interact and we started to trade emails
02:09and pictures and from that point on I mean we've become very good friends during the passage of
02:15time but a lot of work because when it became serious we're not just making pretty pictures,
02:20we're supplying them with images that they can view and make that crucial decision, is this a
02:26flat enough site to land our spacecraft, will it be safe, will we get the sample back to earth.
02:31So 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?
02:40I'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 I think the
03:00universe's first 3D picture of Pluto to light and they went on to photograph an object in the
03:07Kuiper belt as you probably know. But yes Rosetta also, we've made some lovely stereo images so
03:13maybe there's a book there too. I think the difference is that Dante wanted to involve me
03:20and involve us at an early stage so that we could actually contribute to the conduct of the mission,
03:25that's the crucial difference. I understand that you were actually called upon to help the team
03:29solve a major issue they had trying to find a suitable landing spot on the surface of an
03:35asteroid that looked very different than they expected it to. Do you remember how the atmosphere
03:40was among the scientists during this challenging time? Yeah well I think it was suddenly becoming
03:47much more difficult than they'd expected because Bennu wasn't a solid object with flat places,
03:53it was a completely randomly accrued object. It's a rubble pile and there are no places where
04:00it's safe to land apparently. There's only two different sizes of pebbles and it's very difficult
04:07to 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
04:17potential landing site you can really make an instinctive judgment as to whether things are
04:21going to work out or not. How near is this boulder? How much slope is there? How dangerous is it to be
04:27to get it off and get on? So that's where we were able to get into it and I know that at one point
04:35Dante 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 and everybody sat around the table
04:45I think and made those decisions looking at Bennu as if they were there. So can you explain to us
04:51how do you create these stereo images? Basically to make a stereo image you need two different
04:57viewpoints. Just as in real life when I look at you my left eye has a viewpoint and my right eye
05:02has a viewpoint. Slightly different. I see more of your your cheek here, more of your cheek here
05:07and that's the whole thing. I mean I've said it there. What you have to do in making a stereo
05:14image is to reproduce that effect. So I have to take a picture from my left eye, I have to take a
05:18picture for my right eye and then I put him in a viewer like this in a situation where my left
05:24eye only sees the left image and my right eye only sees the right image. Then the effect is reproduced.
05:31So I see this crater as if I were about a mile away from Bennu but my eyes are about a hundred
05:38thousand miles apart. No, not 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 it was a labor of love
05:52and it was also very rushed. I remember saying to Dante we should do the book. We have such
05:58an amazing collection of images. Not just of the details of the surface but also of the
06:04whole planet which is something very attractive. So we started to think of a book and we realized
06:12that it could be the world's first opportunity to make a real atlas of an asteroid. So that's what
06:18we attempted to do and the fact that it has stereo images as well I think makes it something very
06:23very unique and special. So who is the book aimed at? Who is the target audience? The book is really
06:29aimed at anyone who has an interest in this kind of subject. Anyone who's interested in what they
06:33see when they look up in the night sky. It's not just for scientists. There's a whole world
06:39of scientific information in there for anyone who wants it. But if you read it as a story
06:43you should be able to understand it without prior knowledge.