Queen's Brian May to launch first solo song in 21 years from NASA

Written by Brian May alongside esteemed lyricist Don Black (John Barry, Meat Loaf, Queen + Paul Rodgers), the song entitled ‘New Horizons’ was recorded and completed earlier this month at Allerton Hill Studios.

Brian will be there in person when the song gets its global premiere at NASA control headquarters in Maryland, Washington County on Tuesday 1st January 2019. The track will then be available to download digitally afterwards.

It’s the Queen legend’s first official solo single since ‘Why Don't We Try Again’ way back in autumn 1998, which was an offshoot from his second studio album ‘Another World’.

Brian, of course, is a doctor of astrophysics and ‘New Horizons’ is his personal homage to NASA’s New Horizons mission, which on New Year’s Day 2019 will achieve the most distant spacecraft flyby in history, in an encounter with a remote Kuiper Belt Object (KBO) named Ultima Thule, far out beyond Pluto on the edges of the solar system.

An anthem that celebrates mankind’s spirit of exploration, Brian’s ‘New Horizons’ track (Ultima Thule mix) celebrates the entire 12-year voyage of the New Horizons probe, and includes a message from the late-great Stephen Hawking congratulating NASA on their successful rendezvous with Pluto in 2015.

“This project has energised me in a new way,” says Brian. “For me it’s been an exciting challenge to bring two sides of my life together - Astronomy and Music.

“It was Alan Stern, the Project Instigator of this amazing NASA Mission, who threw down the glove last May. He asked if I could come up with a theme for Ultima Thule which could be played as the NH probe reached this new destination.

“I was inspired by the idea that this is the furthest that the Hand of Man has ever reached – it will be by far the most distant object we have ever seen at close quarters, through the images which the space craft will beam back to Earth. 

“To me it epitomises the human spirit’s unceasing desire to understand the Universe we inhabit. Everyone who has devoted so much energy to this mission since its launch in January 2006 will be feeling they are actually INSIDE that small but intrepid vehicle - only about the size of a grand piano - as it pulls off another spectacular close encounter.

“And through the vehicle’s ‘eyes’ we will begin to learn, for the very first time, what a Kuiper Belt Object is made of.  And pick up precious clues about how our solar system was born.”

Brian has been premiering snippets of the track on Instagram, which you can lend your lugholes to below: