Queen guitarist and contributing New Horizons scientist Brian May wrote a song celebrating the spacecraft’s New Year’s flyby with Ultima Thule, a supposed block of ice and rock in the Kuiper Belt beyond the orbit of Pluto.
May is expected to release the track shortly after midnight on New Year’s Day at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, where scientists, space enthusiasts and the media are gathered for the the New Horizons spacecraft’s encounter with the most distant planetary body ever explored up-close.
The rock star astrophysicist discussed the song with reporters on New Year’s Eve, a few hours before the flyby.
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