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 Pultelva, I'm a senior writer at space.com and today I have

00:04 something really special for you. I'm here with Sir Brian May, the rock legend of Queen, who also

00:10 happens to be a part-time astronomer and he was one of the scientists working with the data and

00:17 images coming from NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission. OSIRIS-REx was NASA's first mission to collect a

00:24 sample from an asteroid and it will soon deliver this sample to Earth. Sir Brian actually worked

00:31 with Dante Loretta, OSIRIS-REx chief investigator, on a beautiful new book about asteroid Bennu and

00:40 he is here now with us to tell us everything about this book and his collaboration with OSIRIS-REx.

00:48 Thank you very much for finding time to talk to us, it's a great pleasure.

00:52 So let me start at the beginning, you and OSIRIS-REx, how did the two of you get together?

00:56 Well quite informally really, because I'm on the outside of NASA, nobody pays me

01:02 to do this but I love it and I and my collaborator Claudia Manzoni generally go around the internet

01:12 to find things which we can make into stereos because the data is all there from all these

01:17 different missions, from NASA, from ESA, from JAXA, there is enough data there to find viewpoints in

01:24 order to make the stereo images which we crave. We just love making stereo images and of course

01:29 then you have to use a viewer to appreciate them in 3D and I mean I'm creator of the London

01:39 Stereoscopic Company and we now make stereo viewers, we make 3D viewers. So what happened

01:45 with me and Dante was I sent him just off the cuff a couple of his images which I'd made into 3D

01:52 along with Claudia and he was amazed, he said I've never seen them like this, this is such a great

01:57 tool and this might be able to help us find the landing site that we need in order to get our

02:02 samples safely. And so we started to interact and we started to trade emails and pictures

02:09 and from that point on I mean we've become very good friends during the passage of time.

02:16 But a lot of work because when it became serious we're not just making pretty pictures,

02:20 we're supplying them with images that they can view and make that crucial decision,

02:25 is this a flat enough site to land our spacecraft, will it be safe, will we get the sample back to

02:30 Earth. So that's what I became engaged doing and a lot of work but very very happy work.

02:36 Is there any particular reason why you are interested in this mission?

02:39 I'm interested in them all. I was incredibly lucky to be involved in the New Horizons

02:45 mission with Alan Stern who also kind of took me under his wing and I was able to help secure

02:51 3D pictures of Pluto. See no one had ever seen Pluto close up before. So I was able to bring

02:58 I think the universe's first 3D picture of Pluto to light and they went on to photograph an object

03:06 in the Kuiper belt as you probably know. But yes Rosetta also we've made some lovely stereo images

03:12 of maybe there's a book there too. I think the difference is that Dante wanted to involve me

03:20 and involve us at an early stage so that we could actually contribute to the conduct of the mission,

03:25 that's the crucial difference. I understand that you were actually called upon to help the team

03:29 solve a major issue they had trying to find a suitable landing spot on the surface of an

03:35 asteroid that looked very different than they expected it to. Do you remember how the atmosphere

03:40 was among the scientists during this challenging time? Yeah well I think it was suddenly becoming

03:47 much more difficult than they'd expected because Bennu wasn't a solid object with flat places.

03:53 It was a completely randomly accrued object. It's a rubble pile and there are no places where it's

04:00 safe to land apparently. There's only sort of different sizes of pebbles and it's very difficult

04:07 to assess what the landing will actually be like if you can't be there and see it with your own

04:12 eyes. That's where this comes in handy because once you have a stereo image of that particular

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

04:21 going to work out or not. You know how near is this boulder, how much slope is there, how dangerous is

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

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

04:39 whole opinion. I want my whole team to see this. So I sent about a box of these and everybody sat

04:44 around the table I think and made those decisions looking at Bennu as if they were there. So can

04:50 you explain to us how do you create these stereo images? Basically to make a stereo image you need

04:56 two different viewpoints. Just as in real life when I look at you my left eye has a viewpoint

05:01 and my right eye has a viewpoint. Slightly different. I see more of your cheek here,

05:06 see more of your cheek here and that's the whole thing. I mean I've said it there.

05:10 What you have to do in making a stereo image is to reproduce that effect. So I have to take a

05:16 picture from my left eye, I have to take a picture for my right eye and then I put him in a viewer

05:21 like this in the situation where my left eye only sees the left image and my right eye only

05:27 sees the right image. Then the effect is reproduced. So I see this crater as if I were about a mile

05:34 away from Bennu but my eyes are about a hundred thousand miles apart. No, not that far. Delete

05:43 that. My eyes are about half a mile apart. So how did the idea for the book come about?

05:47 We made so many images and it was a labor of love and it was also very rushed and I remember saying

05:55 to Dante we should do the book. We have such an amazing collection of images, not just of the

06:00 details of the surface, also of the whole planet which is something very attractive. And so we

06:08 started to think of a book and we realized that it could be the world's first opportunity to make a

06:15 real atlas of an asteroid. So that's what we attempted to do and the fact that it has stereo

06:20 images as well I think makes it something very unique and special. So who is the book aimed at?

06:26 Who is the target audience? The book is really aimed at anyone who has an interest in this kind

06:31 of subject. Anyone who's interested in what they see when they look up in the night sky. It's not

06:36 just for scientists. There's a lot of, well there's a whole world of scientific information in there

06:40 for anyone who wants it. But if you read it as a story you should be able to understand it without

06:45 prior knowledge.

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