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 with
00:42us to tell us everything about this book and his collaboration with OSIRIS-REx. Thank you very much
00:48for finding time to talk to us, it's a great pleasure. So let me start at the beginning, you and
00:54OSIRIS-REx
00:55how did the two of you get together? Well quite informally really because I'm on the outside of
01:01NASA and nobody pays me to do this but I love it and I and my collaborator Claudia Manzoni generally
01:11go around 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 to find
01:23viewpoints in order to make the stereo images which we crave. We just love making stereo images and of
01:29course then you have to use a viewer to appreciate them in 3D and I mean I'm creator of the
01:39London
01:39stereoscopic company and we now make stereo viewers, we make 3D viewers. So what happened with me and Dante
01:46was I sent him just off the cuff a couple of his images which I'd made into 3D along with
01:52Claudia
01:53and he was amazed, he said I've never seen them like this, this is such a great tool and this
01:58might
01:59be able to help us find the landing site that we need in order to get our samples safely and
02:04so we
02:04started to interact and we started to trade emails and pictures and from that point on I mean we've become
02:13very good friends during the passage of time but a lot of work because when it became serious we're
02:19not just making pretty pictures we're supplying them with images that they can view and make that
02:24crucial decision, is this a flat enough site to land our spacecraft, will it be safe, will we get the
02:29sample back to earth. So that's what I became engaged doing and a lot of work but very very happy
02:36work.
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
02:52pictures 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
03:01first 3D picture of Pluto to light and they went on to photograph an object in the Kuiper belts as
03:07you
03:08probably know but yes Rosetta also we've made some lovely stereo images of maybe there's a book there
03:14too. I think the difference is that that Dante wanted to involve me and involve us at an early
03:22stage 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
03:31trying to find a suitable landing spot on the surface of an asteroid that looked very different
03:37than they expected it to. Do you remember how the atmosphere was among the scientists during this
03:43challenging time? Yeah well I think it was suddenly becoming much more difficult than they'd expected
03:49because Bennu wasn't a solid object with flat places it was a completely randomly accrued object
03:56it's a rubble pile and there are no places where it's safe to land apparently. There's only sort of different
04:04sizes of pebbles and it's very difficult to assess what the landing will actually be like if you can't be
04:11there
04:11and see it with your own eyes. That's where this comes in handy because once you have a stereo image
04:15of that particular potential landing site you can really make an instinctive judgment as to whether
04:21things are going to work out or not you know how near is this boulder, how much slope is there,
04:26how dangerous is it to be to get it off and get on. So that's where we were able to
04:32get
04:32into it and I know that at one point Dante said look all my guys have to see this I've
04:37seen it
04:38this has changed my whole opinion I want my whole team to see this so I sent about a box
04:42of these
04:43and everybody sat around the table I think and made those decisions looking at Bennu as if they were
04:49there. So can you explain to us how do you create these stereo images? Basically to make a stereo image
04:55you need two different viewpoints just as in real life when I look at you my left eye has a
05:01viewpoint and
05:01my right eye has a viewpoint slightly different I see more of your your cheek here be more of your
05:06cheek
05:06here and that's the whole thing I mean I've said it there what you have to do in making a
05:13stereo image
05:14is to reproduce that effect so I have to take a picture from my left eye I have to take
05:18a picture
05:18for my right eye and then I put him in a viewer like like this in the situation where my
05:23left eye
05:24only 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 um but my eyes are
05:38about a hundred
05:39thousand miles apart no no not that far delete that my eyes are about half a mile apart you know
05:45so how did the idea for the book come about we made so many images and um it was a
05:51labor of love
05:52and it was also very rushed and I remember saying to Dante we should do the book you know we
05:57have such
05:57an amazing collection of images not just of the details of the surface also of the of the um the
06:04whole
06:05planet which which is something very attractive and so we started to think of a book and we realized
06:12that it could be the the world's first opportunity to make a real atlas of a of an asteroid so
06:18that's
06:18what we attempted to do and the fact that it has stereo images as well I think makes it something
06:22very
06:23very unique and special so who is the book aimed at who is the target audience the book is really
06:29aimed
06:29at anyone who has an interest in this kind of subject anyone who's interested in what they see when
06:33they look up in the night sky it's not just for scientists there's a lot of well there's a whole
06:39world of scientific information in there for anyone who wants it but if you read it as a story you
06:44should
06:44be able to understand it without prior knowledge
Comments