DAILY EXPRESS
24 October 2018 by SEBASTIAN KETTLEY
A SPACE race to Mars could be the next chapter of interstellar discovery, according to Queen guitarist Brian May and Astronomy magazine editor David Eicher.
The veteran rockstar and astrophysicist believes the next golden age of space exploration could focus on the planet Mars. Mr Eicher agreed the potential for future discovery is untapped but relies on international cooperation and not rivalry. Both space experts spoke to Express.co.uk before the launch of their latest book Mission Moon 3D – the world’s first ever book on the space race in stereoscopic 3D. Coinciding with the book’s launch is the 50th anniversary of the Apollo space program, celebrated by NASA from October this year through to December 2022.
Mr Eicher said: “I think this shows you if you have the will and work together you can do pretty much anything as humans that you set out to do. That’s what we hope the future will be – a little more cooperative in exploring the universe, because one little moon, one little planet and one little solar system, of which there are 400 billion in the Milky Way and there are 100 billion galaxies at least, it’s an enormous universe and to further explore it we will need to work together in the future.”
And that is only the observable universe, [Dr] May added, saying there is much more to explore further out there. However, before humans can go to Mars, there is still a lot to be learned from the discoveries made during the second half of the 20th century.
Part of the creative and research process which went into creating Mission Moon 3D’s stereoscopic images involved trawling through thousands of never-seen-before NASA and Soviet space photos.
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Jim Lovell, commander of the doomed Apollo 13 flight, and Apollo 16 astronaut Charlie Duke both contributed to the book. Mr Duke, who features on the cover of the book, even made a guest appearance during the book’s launch to answer questions from an audience of space enthusiasts.
In his foreword to Mission Moon 3D, the astronaut said: “I hope the story of these fascinating times, in which humans took their first steps out into space, along with these amazing and unprecedented images, will entertain you for a long time.”
Mr Lovell said: “I hope this book – with David J Eicher’s brilliantly evocative text and Brian May’s sensational stereo pictures – will give you something of the experience of those days of the space race to the Moon. May we explorers live to see another great age of discovery of this magnificent universe we live in.”
Mission Moon 3D, by Dave Eicher and Brian May, published by the London Stereoscopic Company, £30, is out now.