Brian May and Graham Gouldman launch tribute song to James Webb Space Telescope

Queen guitarist Brian May and 10cc founder Graham Gouldman have released a new track to celebrate the first images from Nasa’s James Webb Space Telescope.

The telescope, known as Webb’s First Deep Field, lifted off on an Ariane 5 rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana on Christmas Day last year and became operational this week.

The release of May and Gouldman’s song Floating In Heaven coincided with the highly-anticipated release of the first pictures brought to earth by the telescope.

May, who has a doctorate in astrophysics, said: “There is nothing more exciting in a world of exploration than going to a place about which you know nothing.

“The sky’s the limit for what we could find out.”

The music video features May strumming his guitar in ‘space’ while Gouldman is seen floating and singing the mellow tune.

Cover art for Floating In Heaven (Davie Stuart/PA)

The first pictures from the telescope showcase a galaxy cluster called SMACS 0723 as it appeared 4.6 billion years ago.

On New Year’s Day in 2019, May unveiled his new single titled New Horizons at Nasa’s Headquarters in Maryland in the US as a “tribute” to the spacecraft of the same name.

Another space-related song titled ’39 appeared in Queen’s 1975 A Night At The Opera, telling the story of a group of space explorers who return home to find during their one year of travel a century has passed on earth.