Freddie Mercury is now an asteroid: To mark what would’ve been Mercury’s 70th birthday, the International Astronomical Union named an asteroid on the other side of Mars after the singer, Brian May announced today. As the Guardian points out, Freddiemercury—formerly known as Asteroid 17473—is a ball of rubble nearly half a billion kilometres away. May made the announcement at the “Freddie for a Day” party in Switzerland. Joel Parker, an astronomer who helped push through the naming, told the Guardian, “It’s not quite traveling at the speed of light. But from an Earth perspective, this certainly has made a supersonic man out of him.”