Dragons in space
It’s been over a month since SpaceX sent its Dragon spacecraft up to the ISS, filled with new solar arrays and a bunch of experiments to keep the astronauts up there occupied. It’s time for those experiments to make their way home, with the Dragon spacecraft set to make the trek back to Earth in the early hours of tomorrow morning.
SpaceX’s Dragon left Earth with 3,500kg of hardware and leaves the ISS with 2,000kg of completed experiments. One of the major experiments conducted over the last month is the Astrovad vest test – a vest that helps block radiation. The astronauts on the ISS have been testing the vests for comfort – performing daily tasks and sleeping in them to test their viability for future missions to the moon.
The spacecraft unscrews from the ISS at 16:45pm P.T, though for us that’s 02:45 am for us in South Africa. Yes, it’s an early one. But if you’re somehow still awake at that hour, you can tune in to Dragon’s departure right here in the video below. NASA won’t be live-streaming the capsule’s touchdown on Wednesday, 11 January, but you can still follow the ship’s journey to Earth on the NASA Space Station blog.
Source: Digital Trends
Samsung targets February for S23 announcement
It’s a new year, which means a Samsung Unpacked should be right around the corner. And if Samsung’s Columbian website is correct, the company is aiming for a 1 February date to host its event. The announcement has since been deleted, but it was up long enough for Barry Allen to archive it on the Wayback Machine.
It’s all but confirmed that we’ll get to meet the new Galaxy S23 at the event – with the deleted announcement’s slogan being “meet the new Galaxy”. Sure, it could be some other Galaxy device. But considering this is when Samsung likes to debut its flagship for the year, we can be pretty certain it’ll make an appearance.
Thanks to leaks in December last year, we’ve got a good idea of what the S23 Ultra is packing. We don’t know much about the less expensive models, though we’re not far off from the official announcement. We can contain ourselves until then, right?
Source: The Verge
Apple has a busy year ahead
Apple’s already begun planning its lineup for the year, though it’s looking to be a rather quiet year for the tech brand – relatively speaking. It’s supposedly looking to release its mixed-reality headset sometime in 2023 – after seven years of being in development, according to Mark Gurman.
Mark also gave us a look at what we could expect from Apple’s Mac lineup for 2023. A new set of MacBook Pros is reportedly being released in the first half of the year, keeping the same design as the current 14- and 16in models. The difference? The newer models will include M2 Pro and M2 Max chips – a slight improvement over current chips.
A new Mac Pro (identical to the 2019 model) is also coming, though it’s lacking one rather important feature: the ability to add more RAM. It’s because the memory is tied to the M2 Ultra motherboard, leaving no way to add more yourself. It won’t be the end of the world, however. The new Mac Pro will have two SSD storage slots, and space for media, graphics, and networking cards.
Apple has apparently removed a 12in MacBook from its schedule, instead replacing it with a new 15in MacBook Air. What it’ll come with spec-wise, we can’t be sure.
Source: Bloomberg (Mark Gurman)
They see me Roland (flying)
2022 was Roland’s 50th anniversary and although we’re already in 2023, Roland took the opportunity to show off its 50th-anniversary concept piano at this year’s CES conference. Just look at this thing. It’s gorgeous and rather expensive-looking. That’s good because it’s not for sale. And it never will be. This was just Roland’s way of showing off.
The electronic piano was designed in collaboration with Karimoku, a renowned furniture maker in Japan. The piano itself is dressed in one giant piece of Japanese Nara oak, perfectly crafted to hide the instrument’s 360-degree speaker system. You wouldn’t even know there were 14 speakers under there if we hadn’t told you, right?
And we still haven’t even mentioned the piano’s coolest feature yet: flying speakers. Yes, flying speakers. Roland has packed speakers into drones that hover around the player to (supposedly) create a better-sounding reverb that you might only get from playing in a concert hall. There’s also a screen built into the wood above the keys, letting the player stream tutorials or video call their piano teacher.
As we already mentioned, this one isn’t for sale. It’s possible that Roland could pull some of these features into future projects (such as the flying speakers or baked-in tutorial screen). For now, though, they’re resigned to sticking around as concept features.
Source: Engadget