NASA’s Artemis 2 astronauts are capturing the future of human spaceflight on their iPhones.
Fifty-eight years ago, NASA’s Apollo 8 astronauts photographed the famous Earthrise image. This image of our “pale blue dot,” as famed astronomer Carl Sagan referred to Earth several decades later, forever changed humanity’s relationship with both space and Earth. Today, astronauts are seeing Earth from space through a new lens: the iPhone.
The crew, made up of NASA astronauts commander Reid Wiseman, pilot Victor Glover, mission specialist Christina Koch, and mission specialist Jeremy Hansen from the Canadian Space Agency, were cleared to bring iPhone 17s on board, though the devices do not connect to the internet.
Throughout the mission, the crew has used these devices to take striking images of everything from Earth to each other, with Wiseman and Koch even posing with their home planet in some silhouetted shots. In the mission livestream, the astronauts can be seen at times floating a phone back and forth to snap photos for one another. However, according to Wiseman, iPhone photography can be a bit tricky in space.
“It’s like walking out back at your house, trying to take a picture of the moon. That’s what it feels like right now trying to take a picture of Earth,” Wiseman told Mission Control during the livestream.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman made the intentional decision to permit smartphones on board, to allow the crew an additional means of capturing personal photos.
“We are giving our crews the tools to capture special moments for their families and share inspiring images and video with the world. Just as important, we challenged longstanding processes and qualified modern hardware for spaceflight on an expedited timeline,” Isaacman shared in a Feb. 4 X post about the decision to allow smartphones on board. “That operational urgency will serve NASA well as we pursue the highest-value science and research in orbit and on the lunar surface. This is a small step in the right direction.”
This isn’t Isaacman’s first time bringing smartphones into space. In commanding the SpaceX Inspiration4 mission in 2021, the first private spaceflight to reach Earth orbit, Isaacman and his crew brought iPhone 12s on board to capture imagery. They even used Apple watches to collect biometric crew data.
Now, the Artemis 2 astronauts aren’t just using iPhones to document their journey. They are also using GoPros as well as professional Nikon cameras to capture moments from the mission. Their use, in addition to Isaacman’s comments, do imply that future crewed missions will likely also send astronauts into space with smartphones. But at least for now, they primarily serve as a complement to more standard photography equipment similar to what astronauts have used to snap photos of space for decades.