What you need to know
- Samsung used stratospheric balloons to send four S24 Ultra handsets into space.
- The phones rose to over 120,000 feet above the Earth.
- They captured over 150 images of the western United States.
Mobile phone manufacturers like to showcase how good their cameras are in various inventive ways. But Samsung has just raised the bar by around 120,000 feet. On this occasion, the South Korean tech giant sent four Galaxy 24 Ultra handsets into space to capture images of the western United States.
As reported by PetaPixel, Samsung used four specially designed lightweight carbon-fiber skeletons attached to stratospheric balloons filled with hydrogen. The phones were then attached to custom-designed 3D mounts, which allowed a flight computer to capture images using several angles and orientations, according to Fox Business. The photos Samsung has shared, show a range of wide-angle, 1x, 3x, 5x, and main camera imagery.
The balloons were launched from four locations between January 25 and January 31, 2024: Los Angeles, Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon, and the Sierra Nevada mountains. According to Samsung, this was “to capture a diversity of landscapes that would truly put the S24 Ultra’s capabilities to the test.”
The four phones eventually climbed to 120,000 feet—almost 23 miles—above the Earth. Although not technically space, this is significantly higher than commercial airliners, which typically fly at an altitude of between 31 and 38,000 feet. It’s also high enough to see the curvature of the Earth.
After capturing the images, the teams vented the hydrogen gas and deployed parachutes to allow the rigs to slowly descend back to Earth at around five miles per hour. Samsung tracked the devices' locations as they fell before regaining them.
The results are pretty impressive. If you want to see more, Samsung Mobile US has made the images available on its X (formerly Twitter) page – users need to engage with the post, and they will receive a photo taken from space from Samsung.
