NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission, although not originally intended to perform stereoscopic imaging, benefited from the expertise of Brian May and Claudia Manzoni, who used the mission's massive visual data to create a three-dimensional image of asteroid Bennu.
The above stereoscopic image is a pair of close-ups of materials from the ancient asteroid Bennu acquired by NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission and will be delivered to Earth on September 24, 2023. The materials sit atop TAGSAM (Touch-and-GoSampleAcquisitionMechanism), the 2020 instrument used to collect samples from asteroids. The sample and TAGSAM are currently in a clean room at the Astromaterials Collection Facility at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. Image source: Original image provided by Erika Blumenfeld and Joseph Abersold/Stereoscopic processing by Brian May and Claudia Manzoni.
Producing a stereoscopic image of the asteroid Bennu was not part of NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission, but as a group of citizen scientists, Claudia Manzoni and Brian May, Queen guitarist and astrophysicist, joined the science team at the invitation of the mission's principal investigator, Dante Lauretta, and looked for stereoscopic imaging opportunities in the vast amounts of visual data acquired by the spacecraft's cameras on Bennu.
To do this, the researchers looked for pairs of images of Bennu's surface from viewpoints that were a certain distance apart. This distance between viewpoints is called the "baseline," and it must be just right in order for us to feel depth and realism when viewing images in stereo. This way of seeing requires sending left and right images to our left and right eyes respectively, which is how we see in "real life". In this case, small differences between parts of a pair of stereoscopic images, known as parallax differences, allow our brains to momentarily perceive depth and three-dimensionality in the images.
In the image shown here, Bennu samples are safely delivered to Earth, an effort facilitated by the planning team. After the TAGSAM gimbal was removed from the avionics deck at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, the researchers photographed it from multiple angles, eventually finding a perfect pair that showed the subtle structure of a few grains in the deep black sample.
Without stereoscopic glasses, we can also watch this pair of side-by-side stereoscopic photos by relaxing our eyeballs, just like staring into infinity through a screen. But the best experience is with stereoscopic glasses, like the one the OSIRIS-REx mission team used to view our stereoscopic images as they searched for safe locations on the surface of asteroid Bennu for a delicate "touch and see" sampling operation.
The largest "boulder" in the picture is about 1 cm in diameter. Please enjoy this piece of history!