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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