"The human race explores because it needs to know." "This became a song which is an anthem to human endeavor," May said.
A YouTube video that May said he and his colleagues made on a "shoestring budget" will also be available, and will also tell the story of the mission team. May played his new single just after midnight on New Year's Day, when it became available on iTunes (opens in new tab) and various streaming platforms. The song both begins and concludes with those quotes, while a third is tucked in the middle. Tucked into the new single are quotes from the late cosmologist Stephen Hawking. May sat down with English lyricist Don Black, who penned iconic songs such as "Born Free," which May described as "a very forward-looking song." The next morning, May woke up with what he described as two simple verses in his inbox from Black - verses that inspired him and kicked him into action. May said that, as he considered the mission's goals, he began to hear in his head "the music of an object plummeting through space faster than anything before." He realized that, rather than trying to focus on the specifics of the mission itself, he should instead work to incorporate the spirit of exploration embodied by the spacecraft. "I thought this was going to be hard, because I can't think of anything that rhymes with Ultima Thule," he said. May said he initially had some reservations. (Image credit: Bill Ingalls/NASA)Īccording to May, New Horizons principal investigator Alan Stern, a planetary scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Colorado, called him up to request he write a song for the mission. May composed a special song just for the flyby. 1, 2019, flyby of the Kuiper Belt object Ultima Thule by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft. Astrophysicist Brian May, lead guitarist for the rock band Queen, speaks with reporters ahead of the Jan.
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