Brian May’s new single will premiere at Nasa.

The Queen guitarist, 71, is releasing his first solo work in over two decades, New Horizons, a “tribute” to the spacecraft of the same name.

The single, being released digitally, will air for the first time at Nasa, in Maryland in the US, on New Year’s Day.

Spacecraft New Horizons is on course for a flyby of the Ultima Thule object on January 1, when it is expected to break its own record for humanity’s most distant tour of a cosmic object.

The track will be May’s first official solo single since Why Don’t We Try Again, in 1998.

He said: “For me it’s been an exciting challenge to bring two sides of my life together – astronomy and music.”

May, who has a doctorate in astrophysics, has been releasing clips of the track on Instagram and Twitter.