Samsung Galaxy S24 leak shows a familiar design ahead of early 2024 launch
Early renders show a very similar looking phone to last year’s Galaxy S23. | Image: SmartPrix / OnLeaks
If you were hoping for a revolutionary design for next year’s Samsung Galaxy S24 you might be disappointed. Unofficial renders of the upcoming phone published by SmartPrix in collaboration with leaker OnLeaks show a very similar looking phone to this year’s Galaxy S23 including a squared off design, and no defined camera bump around its three raised camera lenses.
Based on this leak, any visible changes will minimal. SmartPrix reports that the Galaxy S24 is ever so slightly taller and thinner than the S23 that came before it, and the overall screen size is reportedly slightly bigger corner-to-corner at 6.17-inches rather than 6.1-inches. There are still three camera lenses visible on the rear of the phone, which SamMobile notes are rumored to be the same resolution as the S23; 50-megapixel main, 12-megapixel ultrawide, and a 10-megapixel telephoto with a 3x optical zoom.
Image: SmartPrix / OnLeaks
The three-camera layout appears to remain intact.
Leaker Ice Universe adds that the Galaxy S24’s screen is likely to have a 1080p resolution, with a peak brightness of 2500 nits. Battery size is reportedly rated at 4,000mAh, with a maximum fast charging speed of 25W.
A spec bump to Qualcomm’s 2024 flagship processor (likely to be called the Snapdragon 8 Gen 3) seems likely for US models, but SamMobile reports that Samsung might once again equip the phone with its own Exynos processor in other global markets after exclusively using Snapdragon for the Galaxy S23.
Rumors also suggest Samsung might launch the Galaxy S24 slightly earlier in the year than its last two flagships, which were revealed on February 1st, 2023 and February 9th 2022. 9to5Google recently reported on a prediction from leaker Ice Universe who namechecked a January 18th release date for the Galaxy S24.
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Watch Linda Yaccarino’s wild interview at the Code Conference
Photo by Jerod Harris/Getty Images for Vox Media
On Wednesday evening, X CEO Linda Yaccarino appeared on stage at the Code Conference with frustration and protest. “I think many people in this room were not fully prepared for me to still come out on the stage,” she told interviewer Julia Boorstin, senior media and tech correspondent at CNBC.
Yaccarino sounded rattled. She’d found out earlier in the day that Kara Swisher, a Code Conference co-founder, had booked a surprise guest to appear an hour before her: Yoel Roth, Twitter’s former head of trust and safety. He has been an outspoken critic of the direction Elon Musk has taken the site.
In his interview with Swisher, Roth recounted how Musk put him personally in danger. Musk suggested on Twitter that Roth had advocated for sexualizing children — a completely unfounded claim — which led to death threats and his address being posted online. “I had to sell my house. I had to move,” Roth said. He encouraged Yaccarino to think about how Musk could turn on her, too, and said the site was bleeding users and advertisers.
These criticisms are nothing new, but Yaccarino was visibly bothered by having to appear shortly after a well-known critic of her company. “I’d be happy to respond,” Yaccarino said. “I think I’ve been given about 45 minutes [notice].” The conference’s 300-some seat ballroom was packed for her appearance; I caught Swisher reclining on a couch in the back before things kicked off, waiting to see the results of her surprise play out.
Throughout the interview, Yaccarino repeated that she’s only been on the job at X for 12 weeks, as if to say there’s only so much she could have done by now. But in that time, she’s managed to do one thing consistently: dismiss concerns about X, whether it’s the platform’s disinvestment in moderation or Musk’s chaotic leadership.
Her dismissive stance was very much on display Wednesday night. She wrote off Roth’s claims about the platform’s performance as outdated (“I work at X, he worked at Twitter,” she said); she said the Anti-Defamation League — which Musk is threatening to sue — pays too much attention to the anti-Semitism on X and not enough to the improvements the platform has made; and she argued that despite the panic around advertisers fleeing, most of the big ones are coming back.
These were not satisfying answers if you’re a person who thinks Musk is destroying Twitter or stoking harassment. But they were, for the most part, confident answers. Yaccarino answered slowly and carefully, and she seemed determined to push the complaints aside as simply collateral damage for reinventing the platform.
“X is a new company building a foundation based on free expression and freedom of speech,” she said at the start.
Boorstin prodded Yaccarino for hard numbers on how X is doing amid all these crises. Yaccarino said the company would be profitable “in early ’24.” The platform has 200-250 million daily active users. “Something like that,” Yaccarino said. She went to check her phone, as if to confirm the number, but never finished checking. Later, she suggested that X has 540 million monthly active users and 225 million daily active users. (That would be slightly down from the 238 million daily users Twitter had before the acquisition.)
It was hard to know whether Yaccarino wasn’t prepared enough or if she simply didn’t want to give definitive answers. At one point, Boorstin asked about Musk’s recent statement that X will eventually charge all users to post on the platform, and Yaccarino appeared unable to speak to the proposed change.
“Can you repeat?” Yaccarino asked.
“Elon Musk announced you’re moving to an entirely subscription based service,” Boorstin said. “Nothing free about using X.”
“Did he say we were moving to it specifically or is thinking about it?” Yaccarino asked.
“He said that’s the plan,” Boorstin said. “Did he consult you before he announced that?”
“We talk about everything,” Yaccarino said. She never clarified X’s plans.
The interview was filled with rocky moments like this, but Yaccarino didn’t run. As the clock ran out on the interview, Boorstin said she would let Yaccarino stay as long as she wanted — and Yaccarino took her up on it. Even when Yaccarino finally said she needed to leave, she stuck around for a few more questions. At close to 40 minutes, it was the longest interview of the conference.
It was a long conversation and a far more complicated one than Yaccarino may have wanted to have. At the top of the interview, she tried to push aside concerns about X with a statement of confidence. “It’s a new day at X, and I’ll leave it at that,” she said.
But it could never be that simple. As long as Musk is in the mix, she’ll always need more time to explain whatever’s going on at X.
The 2024 Honda Prologue EV will have 300 miles of range
That’s a lovely blue on the Prologue. | Image: Honda
Honda revealed that the upcoming 2024 Honda Prologue is “expected” to get an EPA-estimated 300 miles of range on a single charge while announcing a slew of new specs for its first all-electric SUV. Built on GM’s Ultium platform, it achieves this range thanks to the 85kWh battery inside, which is the same size as the Chevy Blazer EV.
The two vehicles have many similarities inside and out, from the 121.8-inch wheelbase to the 11-inch driver instrument display. However, the official EPA range for Chevy’s SUV is already known, at 279 miles on a full charge.
Both the Prologue and the Blazer have Google built-in software, but Honda’s EV includes the wireless Apple Carplay and Android Auto support that GM has decided its EVs will do without.
Honda will include several charging package options for Prologue (and Acura ZDX) buyers that include public charging credits. One package includes an 11.5kW home charging station with a $500 Honda Home Electrification installation service incentive plus $100 in public charging credit.
Honda PR representative Chris Martin tells The Verge in an email that the credits work specifically with EVgo and its roaming partners, including ChargePoint. Honda’s EVgo partnership enables customers to find chargers, see real-time stall availability, and initiate a charge, all within the new HondaLink app.
The second charging package option includes a slower (but portable) 7.6kW charger, a $250 install credit, and a $300 public charging credit. Finally, the third option eschews the Level 2 home charging offerings (in case you already have one or live in an apartment) and gives you $750 in public charging credits instead.
Regardless of your package of choice, new Honda and Acura EV owners will also get a free sampling of DC fast charging at Electrify America stations, up to 60kWh. That’s probably good for a free one-way road trip from New York City to Niagara Falls. Just remember that you won’t get to take advantage of Electrify America’s fastest 350kW charging options since the Prologue only supports up to 155kW. Honda says you can get 65 miles of range in about 10 minutes of fast charging.
Honda will deliver the first Prologue EVs in early 2024, and it will start in the “upper $40,000s.” It might even qualify for the $7,500 federal tax incentive, considering the Chevy Blazer is included in the list. Honda plans to introduce 30 new EVs globally by 2030 with a sales volume of 2 million vehicles.
Honda, like Toyota, is slow to kick-start its electrification process compared to other automakers, so it’s built the Prologue on GM’s platform as a stopgap. The Prologue is Honda’s first electric vehicle in the US since the automaker’s compliance 2015 Honda Fit EV model, while its next one, a larger SUV, will come in 2025 and run on the company’s own e Architecture platform.
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The Raspberry Pi 5 is finally here
Photo by Emma Roth / The Verge
Despite doubts that the Raspberry Pi 5 would launch this year, the latest version of the microcomputer has arrived with some notable upgrades at a $60 starting price. Not only is it supposed to perform better than its predecessor, but it’s also the first Raspberry Pi to come with in-house silicon.
Powering the brain of the Raspberry Pi 5 is a 64-bit quad-core Arm Cortex-A76 processor that runs at 2.4GHz, allowing for a two to three times performance boost when compared to the four-year-old Raspberry Pi 4. The device also comes with an 800MHz VideoCore VII graphics chip that the Raspberry Pi Foundation says offers a “substantial uplift” in graphics performance.
I got to try out the device for myself. While I didn’t have time to do much tinkering with it, I found that it boots up pretty quickly, while also loading webpages fast when compared to my older Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+. It does get pretty hot, but luckily the Raspberry Pi sent over an active cooling component that I could mount directly on the board.
Photo by Emma Roth / The Verge
Additionally, the Raspberry Pi 5 features a component made by the Raspberry Pi Foundation for the first time: the southbridge, also known as a part of the motherboard that helps it communicate with peripherals. With the RP1 southbridge, the Raspberry Pi Foundation says the microcomputer “delivers a step change in peripheral performance and functionality,” enabling faster transfer speeds to external UAS drives and other peripherals.
It also opens up two four-lane 1.5Gbps MIPI transceivers that let you connect up to two cameras or displays. There’s also a new single-lane PCI Express 2.0 interface for the first time, offering support for “high-bandwidth peripherals.” However, the Raspberry Pi Foundation notes that you’ll still need a separate adapter, such as an M.2 HAT (Hardware Attached on Top) for you to take advantage of it.
In terms of ports, you can expect dual 4Kp60 HDMI display outputs with support for HDR, a microSD slot, two USB 3.0 ports, two USB 2.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, and a 5V DC power connection via USB-C. Some other nice-to-haves include support for Bluetooth 5.0 and Bluetooth Low Energy (LE) and peak SD card performance that’s “doubled” with the SDR104 high-speed mode. Together, all these upgrades make the Raspberry Pi 5 even more versatile, whether you’re using it as an ultra-budget desktop PC, a media server, or even a DIY security system.
The Raspberry Pi 5 will come with a couple of different RAM options at launch, costing $60 for the 4GB version and $80 for 8GB. That makes it slightly more expensive than the Raspberry Pi 4, which is priced at $55 for 4GB of RAM and $75 for 8GB. The Raspberry Pi 5 will be available to purchase before the end of October.
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Apple will have to face an antitrust lawsuit alleging iOS Apple Pay dominance
Illustration: The Verge
California Northern District Judge Jeffrey White partially denied (PDF) Apple’s request to dismiss a proposed federal class action lawsuit over Apple Pay, reports Reuters. Three credit unions argued Apple violated the Sherman Anti-Trust Act by charging too much in processing fees and being too exclusionary by not letting other digital wallets access its NFC-scanning hardware.
The judge agreed with the credit unions’ argument that because QR code payment apps (like Venmo) lack Apple Pay’s convenience and functionality, and it's too expensive to switch to Android, iOS tap-to-pay is a market unto itself. And Apple is the only player in a certain market that would have other competition if not for that little NFC reader detail that makes it a monopoly say the lawyers.
Lawyers representing the credit unions also claimed Apple Pay is “unlawfully tied” to Apple phones, tablets, and watches. Judge White also sided with Apple’s argument that the claim fell flat because Apple Pay is free, and the company doesn’t force people to use it. But overall, the judge writes that the claim that Apple has a monopoly is “plausible.”
He agreed that the company charges “arbitrary and inflated fees” for payment processing and wrote that the lack of competition in the iOS digital payments market is harmful to consumers. No NFC access for third-party apps sounds anticompetitive to Judge White. The EU deemed Apple Pay anticompetitive in a preliminary 2022 ruling, also citing Apple’s exclusionary use of the iPhone’s NFC reader.
Apple and the credit unions will meet again in court on December 1st at 11AM PT.
Kia’s three-row EV9 electric SUV will start at $54,900
Image: Kia
The 2024 Kia EV9 will start at $54,900 for the Light RWD trim before destination fees or adding options like a bigger battery or two extra motors for AWD. When announced earlier this year, the EV9 caught everyone’s attention since there are few (and costly) seven-seater fully-electric vehicles on the market, and the automaker’s entry looked like it was primed to disrupt.
The EV9 will come standard with 19-inch wheels, dual 12.3-inch screens up front, a 5-inch screen for HVAC controls, CarPlay and Android Auto, a wireless phone charger, advanced driver assistance features like automatic braking and cross traffic check, and support for ultra-wideband smartphone key access (though that requires a subscription). It can charge its battery from 10 to 80 percent in under 25 minutes when connected to a 350kW DC fast charger (Car and Driver’s preview found it supports up to 230kW speeds).
Other options for three-row electric SUVs are limited and include the Tesla Model X that costs at least $83,490 with seven seats, and while the cheapest Rivian R1S starts at $78,000, ordering one with a shipping date in 2024will have you looking at a $92,000 quad-motor configuration. And while a bit cramped, Tesla’s Model Y with seven seats costs $52,990, and it qualifies for the $7,500 federal tax credit.
But by comparison, similar-size gas-powered three-row SUVs are still available for quite a bit less. Kia’s own 2024 Telluride starts at $36,000 (about $40,000 when said and done). The EV9 is about the same height and width and just slightly longer than the Telluride.
Kia’s EV9 will initially ship from South Korea for availability by year-end. It doesn’t yet qualify for the federal tax credits due to complex new rules that foreign automakers are pretty mad about. But the EV9 might qualify after Kia starts assembling it in the USA sometime next year at a new factory in West Point, Georgia. Other trims in the lineup, including the Light Long Range, Wind, Land, and GT-Line, will have prices announced “later.”
Adobe’s full Photoshop on the web launch includes its popular desktop AI tools
Adobe says it no longer has plans for a free-to-use version of the online photo editing software. | Image: Adobe
After almost two years in beta, Adobe’s Photoshop on the web service — a simplified online version of the company’s desktop photo editing app — is now generally available starting Wednesday, September 27th. According to information Adobe shared with The Verge, Photoshop on the web is launching with the popular Generative Fill and Generative Expand tools that were recently released for the desktop version of Photoshop.
Image: Adobe
Here’s a screenshot of what Photoshop for the web looks like now that it’s out of beta.
Photoshop on the web also provides many of its desktop equivalent’s most commonly used tools but with a redesigned layout that provides new Photoshop users with a more “streamlined” user experience. This includes the Contextual Task Bar feature — which suggests the most relevant steps to take in your workflow — that was added to the desktop Photoshop app earlier this year.
Tools that share similar workflows — like those used to select objects and retouch images — are named and grouped together on the toolbar to make the software easier to navigate. This view can be disabled for experienced creatives who prefer the look of the desktop version of Photoshop’s user interface. Adobe says that desktop features like the patch tool, pen tool, smart object support, polygonal lasso, and more will be added “soon.”
Photoshop on the web also enables users to invite others to collaborate on projects and allows those without an active Photoshop description to view and comment on files.
The web-based Photoshop service is included as part of all Photoshop paid plans (which start at $9.99 per month) and will not be available as a free-to-use experience at launch. Adobe started testing a “freemium” version of its Photoshop for the web experience in June last year after the initial beta release of Photoshop for the web in 2021.
The company previously said that it hoped to offer a free version of the service that provided most of Photoshop’s core desktop functions. But Ashley Still, Adobe’s senior vice president of digital media, has now told The Verge that the creative software giant “does not have immediate plans for a freemium offering” and that new users can instead check out Photoshop on the web through “free interactive demos and in-app tutorials” on Adobe’s website before committing to a subscription.
Pokémon are coming to the Van Gogh Museum to teach the world about art
A comparison of ‘Pikachu with Grey Felt Hat’ and Vincent Van Gogh’s ‘Self Portrait with Grey Felt Hat’ | The Pokémon Company, the Van Gogh Museum
If the Pokémon Company’s video teasing its upcoming collaboration with the Van Gogh Museum was already enough to have you thinking about booking a ticket to Amsterdam, the promise of an impressionistic Pikachu promo card might just do the trick.
In celebration of the Van Gogh Museum’s 50th anniversary, it has teamed up with the Pokémon Company for a special event designed to introduce young artists to Van Gogh’s work, and to teach people about the way he was profoundly influenced by Japanese art.
“This collaboration will allow the next generation to get to know Vincent van Gogh’s art and life story in a refreshing way,” the Van Gogh Museum’s general director Emilie Gordenker said in a press release. “The Van Gogh Museum and The Pokémon Company International have drawn on many years of educational expertise to create a special experience for children, their supervisors, and we hope many others at the Van Gogh Museum.”
Along with on-site activations that guide museum visitors through a selection of Van Gogh’s paintings and delve into the stories behind them, an online exploration of his fascination with Japanese culture will also be available. Along with on-site activations that guide museum visitors through a selection of Van Gogh’s paintings and delve into the stories behind them, an online exploration of his fascination with Japanese culture will also be available.
Even if you can’t make it to the actual museum to snag a ‘Pikachu with Grey Felt Hat’ card in-person, the promos will also be available through the Pokémon Center included in orders from a special collection inspired by the collaboration. But for those looking to make a trip of it, the Pokémon x Van Gogh Museum collaboration is set to run from September 28th until January 7th, 2024, and tickets for general admission to the museum (which are required to get in and can only be purchased online) are available now.
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How Uber learned to stop fighting and play nice with taxis
Image: Gary Coronado / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images
Former foes have turned friends. Uber is listing more and more taxi drivers in its app, most recently in Los Angeles. How did the two sides come together? In short, money.
For over a decade, Uber and taxis have been locked in a desperate battle for control of cities across the world. In one corner, the century-old practice of raising your hand to hail a ride. In the other, pressing a button on your smartphone to summon a car.
But while Uber has succeeded in decimating the cab industry in many cities, it has failed to completely wipe it out. In fact, the taxi business is thriving, with the number of drivers in the US almost tripling in recent years. And now, there are signs that the long and bitter struggle between Uber and taxis is fading as more and more taxi fleets are choosing to be folded into Uber’s cold, technological embrace.
The latest is Los Angeles Yellow Cab, which announced today its plan, along with its partner fleets, to list approximately 1,200 taxis in Uber’s app as part of a pilot program. The pilot has received approval from the Los Angeles Department of Transportation, allowing taxi driver onboarding to begin this week in Los Angeles, San Diego, and Orange counties. Drivers will start receiving Uber trip referrals in the coming weeks.
Los Angeles joins New York City, San Francisco, and a host of other major cities around the world that feature their taxis in Uber’s ridehail app. It also represents the emergence of a new and unexpected alliance between taxi owners and the tech company that vowed to disrupt their business.
“I firmly believe that Uber and taxi are better together,” Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said in a statement to The Verge. “We look forward to giving every taxi driver in the world access to Uber trips while continuing to earn the trust of our taxi partners and drivers globally.”
Uber’s legacy of playing fast and loose with the rules has irked taxi owners, who have accused the company of ignoring local regulations when it moves into new markets. Uber notes that the taxi business had many flaws before it arrived, including predatory loans.
Still, fleet owners and driver associations have largely been helpless as they’ve watched their customers flock to the new platform that promised easy electronic hailing and seamless payment. Medallion prices in New York and elsewhere plummeted, and lenders who made a living by financing the taxi industry went out of business.
Uber was happy to fuel the vitriol. “We’re in a political campaign, and the candidate is Uber and the opponent is an asshole named Taxi,” Uber co-founder and former CEO Travis Kalanick said in 2014. “Nobody likes him, he’s not a nice character, but he’s so woven into the political machinery and fabric that a lot of people owe him favors.”
But a curious thing has happened. After it failed to completely wipe out and replace the taxi business, Uber instead turned to taxis to help fuel its next stage of growth. The company has said that, by 2025, it hopes to list every taxi in the world on its app. And for once, taxi owners are eager to be involved.
“We do what we do really great,” said Ron Sherman, chair and CEO of Creative Mobile Technologies, or CMT, one of Uber’s partners in New York City. “Okay and I hate to say it, but what they do is really great too.”
Photo by Jeffrey Greenberg / Universal Images Group via Getty Images
Where using Uber may get you a taxi
Uber is slightly vague in how it describes the breadth of its growing taxi business, declining to discuss the exact number of cities and drivers. Taxis are featured in the Uber app in 33 countries around the world, with “hundreds of thousands” of taxi drivers receiving trip referrals from the company. Some of the largest markets by volume include Hong Kong, Poland, South Korea, Sweden, and Turkey. Last year, Uber struck a deal to include around 14,000 of New York City’s iconic yellow taxis in its app.
What Uber does like to talk about is the potential for taxi drivers to make a lot more money by accepting trip requests through its app. Taxi drivers are “on track to make well over $1 billion in earnings this year,” the company said.
When a taxi is hailed through Uber, the company gets a cut, though it declined to say how much. Uber’s average global take rate for rides in the third quarter of this year was 28.9 percent, up from 23.5 percent in Q3 of 2022.
In San Francisco, where taxi drivers have been accepting fares through the Uber app since November 2022 under an ongoing pilot program, drivers were found to earn an average of $1,767 per month from Uber trips alone. That’s almost 24 percent more on average than drivers who do not accept Uber trips, according to Q2 data compiled by the San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency. For taxi drivers participating in the pilot program, nearly a quarter of their revenue each month came from third-party referrals like Uber.
The partnership has taken many different forms. In South Korea, Uber created a joint venture with SK Telecom to compete in the country’s high-value mobility market. In Hong Kong, one of the largest taxi markets in the world, Uber acquired the city’s leading e-hail app, HKTaxi, to list more taxi drivers in its app.
How Uber connects with taxi drivers
Uber is using its technological know-how to fuel the expansion. The company’s engineering team wrote an API to help taxi technology providers connect seamlessly with Uber’s customers. In that way, someone hailing a ride with the Uber app can connect with a taxi if it happens to be the closest vehicle. Fares are presented upfront, much like they would be with an Uber trip. And the taxi drivers who receive the trip requests will be paid the same rate as an Uber driver.
“Most of our business is the Uber rider app talks to the Uber driver app,” Sachin Kansal, vice president for product at Uber, said in an interview. “But as we wanted to have some other driver app prompt to our system, we needed to provide this API.”
The API was built specifically to enable taxis that are connected to either Curb or Arro, the two smartphone apps that are owned by New York City’s licensed technology providers, to receive trip requests through Uber. But now, it’s being used globally, Kansal said, with taxi owners across the world using it to connect their drivers to Uber customers.
Depending on the city, riders will see different things in their app when they hail a ride. Some riders will see a standalone feature to request a metered taxi. In other markets, taxis are included among the vehicles riders may get when using UberX, its primary ridehail product.
“There is enough demand to go around,” Kansal said. “We actually want to continue to build our core technology... such that we can bring every taxi in the world on the Uber platform.”
Kansal, who is a former executive at Flywheel, an app-based taxi operator in San Francisco, has leveraged his knowledge of the taxi industry to spearhead this effort to a variety of fleets and proprietary tech into Uber’s platform.
“Sachin’s experience in the taxi industry combined with our team’s passion for solving problems with technology have delivered a cutting edge integration that is a win for everyone,” Khosrowshahi said.
Why taxis?
Before the pandemic, Uber was struggling to become profitable, but there was no question that Uber’s model of using venture capital funds and other investments to subsidize fares and undercut the taxi industry was having its desired effect. The impact in New York City was particularly acute. Nearly a thousand drivers filed for bankruptcy, with at least six drivers dying from suicide.
Still, despite these efforts, taxis were continuing to thrive in the US and overseas markets. Uber began making offers to list cabs in its app in the hopes the increase in supply would help attract new customers while salvaging its business in key markets.
When covid hit, the ridehail and taxi businesses both dried up. And when lockdowns eased, Uber struggled to find enough drivers for its customers, forcing it to spend hundreds of millions of dollars on driver bonuses and incentives aimed at attacking the shortage.
Taxi operators say those efforts are starting to pay off, with drivers in multiple markets reporting an increase in earnings after they began to accept trip referrals from Uber. Some are even going so far as to predict the new partnerships will lead to a resurgence of the taxi industry, which has struggled with low wages, expensive loans, and heightened competition.
“We are seeing a lot of experienced rideshare drivers now consider driving a taxicab and now getting a professional cab driver’s license,” said Hansu Kim, president of Flywheel Technologies, which partners with Uber in San Francisco, “because they’re realizing through this partnership they can get that business from rideshare and also the taxi business.”
Some of Uber’s biggest costs are around insurance and liability. By offloading a certain percentage of its trips to taxi drivers, it can reduce those costs while also increasing revenue. The company recently reported an operating profit for the first time in nearly 14 years in service. Maintaining those profits while increasing its supply is a win for Uber. And owners say it’s a win for taxi drivers, many of whom have struggled for years to match the company’s technological prowess.
“The minute people can make money,” CMT’s Sherman said, “nobody cares who the trip’s coming from.”
EVgo is trying to turn around complaints about slow, broken EV chargers
Image: EVgo
Imagine buying a new car, and suddenly, most gas stations are broken. That’s a reality new electric vehicle owners are finding when it comes to EV charging stations supplied by significant players like ChargePoint, Electrify America, and EVgo.
Many stations often result in customers leaving without a recharge thanks to unreliable or damaged hardware, and the situation is growing worse over time. For some EV owners, it might feel like the companies behind the charging networks are asleep at the wheel. But occasionally they stick their heads up to let us know they realize there’s a problem, and they’re laboring to fix it.
Today, for example, EVgo says it’s made “significant progress” with a renewal campaign designed to boost reliability at its stations.
EVgo started its “ReNew” program in January, which it says helps the company quickly identify old and faulty chargers to upgrade or repair. Now, in the first two quarters this year, EVgo claims to have “upgraded, replaced, or decommissioned” 120 stalls. That’s about the same amount of chargers it had processed in the first three quarters of 2022.
EVgo also says that it has cut station repair times in half over the last 12 months, and its new stations all include at least four stalls, with many under construction that feature six or more. Besides EV owners having difficulty finding a charger that doesn’t have damaged cables, error codes, or network problems for payments or app connectivity, many are now discovering long lines at stations waiting for other EV owners to get their electron fill-ups.
In the last J.D. Power survey for customer satisfaction on DC fast chargers, EVgo scored below the segment average and slotted in between ChargePoint and Electrify America. Tesla, which operates more than 12,000 stalls in North America, is the only company to score above average. EVgo has about 1,900 fast chargers on its network.
Early adopters tend to purchase EV with charging plans in place. Many get home chargers installed, identify work locations, and map out stations before heading out on a road trip. But as EVs increase in availability, many new owners may not have done as much research and have not set careful expectations on charging availability and reliability compared to gas stations.
EVgo is working to improve its customer service and add education to the mix to help new EV owners. That includes staffing more members for its 24/7 customer service offering to help with EV questions and providing account and charging help.
EVgo also owns PlugShare, the more than decade-old EV route mapping app powered by electric vehicle owners who check in at chargers and report their experiences. So, if someone is having an issue, EVgo should know fast. It seems many EVgo stations I’ve visited in the past are highly ranked, except for one at a closed rest stop (why aren’t there more at the other rest stops, EVgo?) Butothers in the past week in California have not had a good time.
Meanwhile, Tesla owners are enjoying the best experience for charging their EVs thanks to Tesla’s extensive network that includes easy charging “handshakes” that are handled by the car and not necessarily started by the app or stall payment screen. However, EVgo’s got content that includes a talk show-style video series to help teach EV drivers about electric cars and charging, as well as advertise the company’s plug-and-charge AutoCharge-Plus service that enables some EV models to start charging without opening the app.
EVgo has also added Tesla connectors at some of its stations to pull Tesla owners in — although it primarily only supports 50 kW speeds because it was based on CHAdeMO to Tesla adapters. However, for non-Tesla EVs, EVgo says “nearly all” its locations now include 350 kW chargers.
The charging landscape may evolve over time as Tesla’s once proprietary charging connector, now known as the North American Charging Standard (or NACS), is getting adopted by virtually every car brand.
That includes Ford, GM, Rivian, Volvo, Polestar, Nissan, Mercedes-Benz, Fisker, Honda, and Jaguar. As new EV models by these brands trickle out with NACS ports on board around 2025, EVgo and other charging companies like ChargePoint (which is trying to fix itself, too) might soon have fewer complications — and fewer excuses — to build a reliable network.
LG dives into the foldable laptop fray
The LG Gram Fold in its array of orientations. | Image: LG
Following the likes of Lenovo, Asus, and most recently HP, LG has announced a new laptop built around a single large foldable display. The device is called the LG Gram Fold, and it’ll be available to buy online in South Korea for 4.99 million won (around $3,697) from October 4th. An international release is yet to be announced.
Like previous foldable laptops, the LG Gram Fold can be used in a variety of different orientations. If you’re after a traditional laptop experience you can fold it upright and place a Bluetooth keyboard on its lower half to use the remaining part of its screen like a 12-inch laptop with a 3:2 aspect ratio. Or, if you ditch the physical keyboard, you can type on a virtual keyboard on the screen itself. Flattening the laptop fully lets you use it like a tablet, or you can add a keyboard to use it like a computer with a 17-inch screen. There’s also a book mode that’s designed for you to half-fold the laptop and hold it in your hands in landscape.
Image: LG
In its laptop mode, using the lower half of the display as a touchscreen. Image: LG
The foldable being used like a book.
The display itself has a resolution of 1920 x 2560, with a peak brightness of 500 nits. In a separate press release announcing mass production of the panel itself, LG Display notes that the screen features a “specialized material” on the folding area of the screen to minimize creasing. LG says the Gram Fold is rated to survive 30,000 folding cycles. That might sound low compared to the 200,000 or even 400,000 that some folding phones are rated for, but the idea is that you typically fold and unfold a laptop less over the course of a day so the lower number of folds shouldn’t translate to a much lower lifespan.
Image: LG
Images show the laptop with a pretty big gap when folded.
Away from the main attraction of its folding screen, the LG Gram Fold’s specs are more modest. It’s powered by an Intel i5-1335U CPU with 16GB of RAM, 512GB of storage, and a 72Wh battery. It weighs in at 1250 grams, and is 19.9mm thick when folded and 9.4mm thick when unfolded. The Windows 11 machine comes with a pair of USB-C ports, one Thunderbolt 4 compatible, and the other USB 3.2 Gen 2x1. The LG Gram Fold is also stylus compatible, but LG is selling those separately.
With LG Display proudly boasting about mass producing these kinds of foldable displays, and competitors Samsung Display and BOE making foldable panels of their own, it seems likely LG won’t be the last laptop manufacturer to announce a device like this. Now we just need to hope for future models that don’t cost multiple thousands of dollars.
Techno-fixes to climate change aren’t living up to the hype
Illustration by Hugo Herrera / The Verge
An updated road map for combating climate change pours cold water on the idea that unproven technologies can play a major role in averting disaster.
Today, the International Energy Agency (IEA) updated its road map for the energy sector to reach net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. It doubles down on the need to swiftly switch to renewable energy while minimizing the use of technologies that are still largely in demonstration and prototype phase today, including carbon capture and hydrogen fuels.
The IEA, initially created to safeguard the world’s oil supply, debuted its landmark road map in 2021 with a stark forecast for fossil fuels: calling for no more investment in new oil, gas, and coal projects. It laid out steps every country on Earth needs to take in order to meet the goals of the Paris climate accord, which seeks to limit global warming to roughly 1.5 degrees Celsius by reaching net-zero emissions. But the planet is still heating up, reaching 1.2 degrees Celsius — triggering more extreme weather and climate disasters and pushing the IEA to revise its global road map to address new realities.
The biggest difference in this new report is that emerging technologies that have gotten a lot of hype as high-tech fixes to climate change now play a significantly smaller role than expected in 2021. Those technologies, which include hydrogen fuel cells for heavy vehicles and devices that filter CO2 emissions from smokestacks or ambient air, now account for 35 percent of emissions reductions rather than nearly 50 percent.
Why? They just haven’t lived up to the hype, the report says pretty plainly.
“I think that some realism has kicked in from this, and I wonder how that realism from this report will kind of perforate through those industries,” says Dave Jones, global insights lead at energy think tank Ember.
Today, “hydrogen production is more of a climate problem than a climate solution,” the report says. Hydrogen as a fuel is nothing new, but most of it is still made using gas. Some countries, including the US, are investing in ways to make hydrogen more sustainable by using renewable energy or fossil fuels paired with carbon capture. If it takes off, it could create cleaner fuel for planes, ships, or trucks.
But building out the infrastructure to transport hydrogen is proving to be a bigger barrier than anticipated, Jones says. On the other hand, electric charging infrastructure, while still limited, is growing much more rapidly. The IEA’s updated road map shrinks the share of fuel cell electric heavy-duty vehicles on the road in 2050 by up to 40 percent compared to its initial 2021 forecast.
The road map similarly cuts down the role of carbon capture technologies by around 40 percent in emissions reductions from power generation. “So far, the history of [carbon capture] has largely been one of unmet expectations,” the IEA’s new report says. The US Department of Energy (DOE) has wasted hundreds of millions of dollars on failed carbon capture projects mostly because of “factors affecting their economic viability,” according to a 2021 report by the Government Accountability Office.
“Removing carbon from the atmosphere is very costly. We must do everything possible to stop putting it there in the first place,” IEA executive director Fatih Birol said in a press release. If pollution doesn’t fall fast enough and the planet warms beyond 1.5 degrees, countries can attempt to use carbon capture technologies that are “expensive and unproven at scale” to try to reverse some of that warming, the press release says. But relying on those technologies would come with heightened climate risks.
Renewable power capacity globally needs to triple by 2030 in order to stop generating planet-heating pollution in the first place, the report says. Spending on clean energy would need to more than double from $1.8 trillion this year to $4.5 trillion by early next decade. Energy efficiency also has to double within the same timeframe, and the world’s wealthiest countries need to reach net-zero emissions years ahead of the global 2050 target.
The timing of this updated road map is important. It follows the United Nations’ first global report card on how well countries are tackling climate change. In short, they’ve fallen behind, as emissions continue to rise despite the need to limit warming to 1.5 degrees.
The UN held a climate summit in New York last week to push countries to ramp up their clean energy commitments, but heads of state from the countries with the biggest carbon footprints — China and the US — didn’t participate. They’ll have another shot during a larger UN climate conference that starts in Dubai in November.
Can the U.S. Make Solar Panels? This Company Thinks So. First Solar kept producing them in Ohio after most of the industry moved to China. President Biden wants many more domestic manufacturers.
Valve suddenly releases SteamVR 2.0 in beta — as headset rumors swirl
Image: Valve
Valve built up to virtual reality for a very long time — and never stopped, though it seemed to slow its roll while nurturing the Steam Deck gaming handheld. But for weeks now, Valve sleuth Brad Lynch has been tracking changes to SteamVR that suggest the wheels are turning again — and today, ahead of a rumored standalone VR headset reveal, I’ve received word from Valve that the next version of SteamVR is basically here.
If you care about Valve’s mystery announcements, you’re probably hanging on every word, so I’m not going to leave any of them out. Here’s the whole email, as bolded by Valve:
Greetings! Today we are shipping SteamVR 2.0 in beta. We see this is as the first major step toward our goal of bringing all of what’s new on the Steam platform into VR.
Users who opt into this beta will notice a new UI with lots of added features:
·Most of the current features of Steam and Steam Deck are now part of SteamVR
·Updated keyboard with support for new languages, emojis, and themes
·Integration of Steam Chat and Voice Chat
· Improved Store that puts new and popular VR releases front and center
This is just the beginning of SteamVR 2.0’s journey, and we’ll have more to share in the coming weeks and months as we collect feedback and work on the features mentioned above. This beta will give us a chance to iron out the kinks as more and more people try it out. As with all betas, this means SteamVR 2.0 will get better and better as we prepare it for its eventual full public launch.
To try out the new UI, opt in to both SteamVR Beta and the Steam Client Beta.
Valve founder and president Gabe Newell said way back in 2017 that the company was working on three “full games” for VR, and released the first, Half-Life: Alyx, in March 2020, nine months after Valve shipped its first bespoke headset, the Valve Index. Both were widely praised, but neither has seen a followup yet.
Valve has reportedly been working on a standalone VR headset codenamed Deckard, though other possible product names have also appeared in the company’s code. Some sort of Valve device has been spotted passing through South Korea’s National Radio Research Agency, which could suggest a release in the near future.
Steam VR Client had another ridiculously large update with a ton of new VR focused implementations. Gonna be a wild night on my Twitter!
Lets start off with these! Which include battery information for.. some sort of Standalone HMD thing pic.twitter.com/tSvwKSSJxp
Hollywood writers reach tentative deal to end the strike
The Writers Guild of America has been on strike since May 2nd. | Photo by Frederic J. Brown / AFP via Getty Images
The Hollywood writers strike may be close to an end. After a more than 140-day work stoppage, the Writers Guild of America (WGA) announced on Sunday night that it reached a “tentative agreement” with major Hollywood studios on pay, working conditions, and more.
“We can say, with great pride, that this is an exceptional deal — with meaningful gains and protections for writers in every sector of the membership,” the WGA negotiating committee wrote in an email to members.
WGA leadership said details of the agreement couldn’t be shared until its language is finalized; after that, writers will have to vote to approve the deal. The guild said its leaders may end the strike as soon as Tuesday, once the contract is finalized and sent to members for a vote. The guild is suspending picketing immediately.
We did it. We have a tentative deal.
Over the coming days, we'll discuss and vote on it, together, as a democratic union. But today, I want to thank every single WGA member, and every fellow worker who stood with us in solidarity. You made this possible. Thank you. #WGAStrongpic.twitter.com/KfzVKoPMPz
The agreement was finalized over several nights of bargaining between the WGA and the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers through the middle and end of the past week.
The WGA first called the strike on May 2nd after negotiations between writers and the AMPTP fell through. While the WGA called for contracts to include better streaming residuals, the preservation of the writers room, and protections surrounding the use of AI, the AMPTP pushed back.
Writers may soon be back to work, but without actors, Hollywood productions will likely remain at a standstill. The Screen Actors Guild - American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA), the union that represents around 160,000 members of the entertainment industry, has been on strike since July.
The strikes have forced studios like Netflix and Warner Bros. Discovery to make adjustments to their financial projections. In July, Netflix estimated it would have an extra $1.5 billion in free cash flow, while Warner Bros. Discovery lowered its earnings expectations by about $300 to $500 million for 2023.
(Disclosure: The Verge’s editorial staff is also unionized with the Writers Guild of America, East.)
Resident Evil Village’s iPhone port might launch a day before Halloween
The tall lady from Resident Evil Village comes to iPhones soon. | Image: Capcom
Capcom quietly revealed an October 30th release date for Resident Evil Village on a page for the iOS and iPadOS versions of Village and the Resident Evil 4 remake. Resident Evil 4 remains listed as “available 2023.” Capcom doesn’t list any prices, but for reference, the macOS version of the game is $29.99 on the Apple App Store. Yesterday, Gematsu reported that Capcom had announced the same release date for the port in Japan.
Capcom hasn’t formally announced the release date for the US version of Village outside of the page linked above. We’ve reached out to the company to confirm the release date is as listed on its site.
Screenshot: Wes Davis / The Verge
Resident Evil Village for iOS and iPadOS appears to have a release date.
In a peek at Village running on the iPhone 15 Pro last week, the game appeared to legitimately run on par with what you’d expect from high-end dedicated portable gaming hardware like the Steam Deck. The games will be compatible with iPads powered by M1 and M2 chips. However, it will only run on the iPhone 15 Pro and 15 Pro Max, so you’ll need to upgrade to Apple’s titanium-edged phone if you want to see the scary, tall vampire lady running natively on your iPhone.
Capcom’s latest entry in its ongoing series of survival horror games was a big part of Apple’s iPhone 15 event, along with the Resident Evil 4 remake, Death Stranding, Assassin’s Creed Mirage, and The Division Resurgence. Apple used the games to show off the capability of the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max phones’ new 6-core GPU.
Meta’s AI chatbot plan includes a ‘sassy robot’ for younger users
Illustration by Nick Barclay / The Verge
Meta is preparing to announce a generative AI chatbot, called “Gen AI Personas” internally, aimed at younger users, according to The Wall Street Journal. Reportedly set to launch during the company’s Meta Connect event that starts Wednesday, they would come in multiple “personas” geared towards engaging young users with more colorful behavior, following ChatGPT’s rise over the last year as one of the fastest-growing apps ever. Similar, but more generally targeted, Meta chatbot personas have already been reportedly tested on Instagram.
According to internal chats the Journal viewed, the company has tested a “sassy robot” persona inspired by Bender from Futurama and an overly curious “Alvin the Alien” that one employee worried could imply the bot was made to gather personal information. A particularly problematic chatbot reportedly told a Meta employee, “When you’re with a girl, it’s all about the experience. And if she’s barfing on you, that’s definitely an experience.”
Meta means to create “dozens” of these bots, writes the Journal, and has even done some work on a chatbot creation tool to enable celebrities to make their own chatbots for their fans. There may also be some more geared towards productivity, able to help with “coding and other tasks,” according to the article.
Meta’s other AI work lately includes reportedly developing a more powerful large language model to rival OpenAI’s latest work with GPT-4, the model that underpins ChatGPT and Bing, as well as an AI model built just to help give legs to its Horizon Worlds avatars. During Meta Connect, the company will also show off more about its metaverse project, and new Quest 3 headset.
The Journal quotes former Snap and Instagram executive Meghana Dhar as saying chatbots don’t “scream Gen Z to me, but definitely Gen Z is much more comfortable” with newer technology. She added that Meta’s goal with the chatbots, as always with new products, is to keep them engaged for longer so it has “increased opportunity to serve them ads.”
NASA collected a sample from an asteroid for the first time — here’s why it matters
Victoria Thiem, system safety engineer from Lockheed Martin, checks the temperature of the actual size OSIRIS-REx’s return capsule sample during the recovery rehearsal at Lockheed Martin, Waterton Canyon campus in Littleton, Colorado on Tuesday, June 27, 2023. | Photo by Hyoung Chang/The Denver Post
The OSIRIS-REx mission, launched in 2016, has collected as much as several hundred grams of asteroid material, which could help scientists understand the earliest stages of the solar system.
NASA completed its first-ever sample return mission from an asteroid today, with a science capsule containing material from an asteroid landing after having traveled on a 1.2 billion-mile journey from the asteroid Bennu. The capsule was released from the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft as it passed by Earth this morning, entering the atmosphere at around 27,000 mph.
The OSIRIS-REx mission, launched in 2016, has collected as much as several hundred grams of asteroid material, which could help scientists understand the earliest stages of the solar system.
“NASA invests in small body missions like OSIRIS-REx to investigate the rich population of asteroids in our solar system that can give us clues about how the solar system formed and evolved,” said Melissa Morris, OSIRIS-REx program executive, in a mission overview briefing. “It’s our own origin story.”
The science capsule was slowed by parachutes and landed in the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range at 10:52 AM ET, a landing area chosen as it is the largest restricted airspace in the United States and has been used for previous NASA sample return missions like Genesis and Stardust.
The landing area is 36 miles by 8.5 miles, and the entire mission has required a very high level of precision — particularly for the spacecraft to rendezvous with the asteroid and collect its sample in 2020.
“The really precise navigation required to orbit Bennu and to touch down and collect our sample, we were under a meter away from our target,” Sandra Freund, OSIRIS-REx program manager, said in a pre-landing briefing. “So that illustrates what kind of navigation precision we’ve had throughout this mission.”
Recovery teams collected the sample from the Utah desert, with a helicopter carrying the sample taking off at 12:15 PM ET. The capsule will be taken to a temporary clean room for first disassembly, removing some of the larger parts such as the backshell. It will then undergo a process called a nitrogen purge in which nitrogen is pumped into the canister to protect the sample. This prevents any of Earth’s atmosphere from entering it as it is shipped to Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, where the canister will be opened for the first time so the sample can be analyzed.
Photo by GEORGE FREY/AFP via Getty Images
Why do we need an asteroid sample?
“We’re really interested in trace organic molecular chemistry,” Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS-REx principal investigator, told The Verge. “We really want to understand — the things that are used in biology today, like amino acids that make proteins and nucleic acids that make up our genes — were they formed in ancient asteroid bodies and delivered to the Earth from outer space?”
If you’re not familiar with models of the formation of the solar system, that idea might sound outlandish, bordering on fantastical. But it’s actually a fairly well-supported and widely accepted theory for how some of the key elements for life came to be on Earth.
It’s important to be clear that the theory is not that life itself arose elsewhere and was delivered to Earth, but rather that the basic building blocks of life — often referred to as organic compounds — could have arrived here billions of years ago carried by asteroids.
That’s been a theory for decades; but to test it out, scientists need access to asteroidal material. Going to visit an asteroid and using instruments on a spacecraft to study it is a good start, but to do the kind of detailed analysis scientists want requires a much bigger laboratory, equipped with instruments like a mile-wide type of particle accelerator called a synchrotron which would be impossible to fit onto a spacecraft.
Another option is to study meteorites, which are pieces of matter (including from asteroids) that come from space and fall to Earth’s surface. That’s how most of this research has been performed historically, using these tiny fragments as samples.
But there are two problems with this approach. Firstly, when a meteorite falls, it doesn’t have the context of where in the solar system it came from. Researchers can’t know its origin, or see what other bodies it was close to, which can give important clues to the interpretation of any data. And secondly, by the time a meteorite has passed through Earth’s atmosphere and landed, it may have picked up matter along the way and been contaminated by the local environment.
When scientists are looking for these trace organic compounds, they need to know that anything they find comes from space and wasn’t picked up here on Earth. So to do that, they need an asteroid sample that is as pristine as possible. That’s where OSIRIS-REx comes in.
A worldwide effort
The OSIRIS-REx mission is the first time that NASA has brought back a sample from an asteroid, but it is following in the footsteps of the Japanese space agency JAXA, which collected two asteroid samples in its historic Hayabusa and Hayabusa 2 missions. Though the first Hayabusa mission gathered just a tiny amount of material, the second mission managed to return around five grams of material from asteroid Ryugu in 2020.
OSIRIS-REx is returning much more material from asteroid Bennu, at around 250 grams, which means that more science can be done — particularly when looking for those small amounts of trace materials. But researchers see the two missions as complementary, rather than competitive.
“Not all asteroids are the same,” said Lauretta, who is also a member of the Hayabusa 2 team. Both Ryugu and Bennu have a similar spinning-top-like shape, but they look very different. Ryugu is larger and more red in color, while Bennu is smaller and more blue. Scientists still aren’t sure what that difference in color means, but being able to analyze and compare the samples on Earth should help understand both how the asteroids are similar and how they differ.
“We look at this as not two sample analysis programs, but one big sample analysis program,” Lauretta said, “because it’s a worldwide effort.”
A window into the early solar system
When scientists want to understand how the Earth formed, they need to look beyond our planet and out into the solar system. Star systems form from enormous clouds of gas that collapse into a star at the center, spinning a disk of material around it.
That’s clear from looking at other star systems, but there’s also evidence from our own solar system: the planets revolve around the sun in the same direction and in a single plane, supporting the idea they formed from a single disk of material.Some of that material coalesced into planets, and some was swept into the earliest asteroids, a number of which still exist today.
In fact, the estimates we have for the age of the solar system come from dating grains within meteorites that have fallen to Earth. That’s because Earth has factors like erosion and plate tectonics which recycle rocks and wipe away the earliest history of the planet, meaning the oldest rocks we have ever found here are around 4 billion years old. The material from asteroids, however, can be even older.
“The asteroids date from about 500 million years earlier in time than the oldest rocks on Earth. So as a geologist, I want to go back all the way to the beginning,” Lauretta said. “And the fun thing is, when you’re looking at asteroids you go literally to the very beginning of the solar system.”
Bennu, the asteroid from which OSIRIS-REx collected its sample, is thought to be made up of material that is around 4.5 billion years old, making it a potential time capsule from the earliest stages of the solar system. But researchers can’t know its age for sure until a detailed analysis has been performed.
Image: NASA
A new asteroid target
Now that the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has dropped off the capsule containing the sample, its initial job is over. But the spacecraft is still in space, and even though it can’t collect another sample it does still have power and a propulsion system, and all its science instruments still operating.
So rather than waste this craft, it will become OSIRIS-APEX and go on to study a new target, the asteroid Apophis. By a fortunate chance of orbital dynamics, it will be able to rendezvous with this asteroid — one of the most famous in the solar system, because it will come close to Earth in the next few years — and study it.
“In 2029, in April, Apophis is gonna fly within 30,000 kilometers of the surface of the Earth, which is about the altitude that our weather satellites orbit at,” Lauretta said. “It’s the biggest, closest flyby of an asteroid for a thousand years,” and it may even be visible to the naked eye from some locations on Earth.
OSIRIS-APEX will be able to follow the asteroid’s path around Earth and meet it, to perform more science observations.
As for the sample from asteroid Bennu, that will be taken to a special facility at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, where work can begin to understand the chemistry of this precious commodity.
Getting the sample back to Earth is just the beginning of the science research, and the team is anxiously awaiting this culmination of all their efforts.
“I get to be one of the very first people on earth to see the capsule, as it is in position out there in the desert. It’s going to be quite an emotional moment for me,” Lauretta said. “We’ve been building and testing and designing this thing for over 12 years. So it’s the end of a very, very long journey, and the beginning of the next chapter.”
Watch as NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission brings asteroid samples back to Earth
NASA
Seven years after the OSIRIS-REx mission launched, a capsule containing rocks captured from the asteroid Bennu in 2020 will land in Utah on Sunday morning.
Today marks the final step of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, which launched in September 2016, as a small capsule containing a sample of the asteroid Bennu descends through the Earth’s atmosphere, landing in the Utah desert for NASA to collect and analyze. This is similar to the method used to collect particles from a comet with the Stardust mission that dropped off a sample in Utah in 2006.
The audacious mission flew the spacecraft to a small, near-Earth asteroid named Bennu and attempted something that hadn’t been done before by orbiting the asteroid, getting close enough to scrape up some material and collect it, and then returning to Earth with the sample. NASA TV will stream coverage of the sample return on its YouTube channel starting at 10AM ET today.
After OSIRIS-REx launched, it employed a slingshot maneuver to sweep around the earth and use its gravity to fling it towards Bennu — you know, like the time The Enterprise whipped around the sun to go back in time and save the whales in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. OSIRIS-REx collected even more than the 60 grams of Bennu material NASA was aiming for when it made the scoop in 2020 before starting its trip back to Earth in 2021.
Image: NASA
An animation of still images showing the OSIRIS-REx grabbing its rock sample from Bennu.
Follow along here for all of the updates about the OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return.
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