Image credit: NASA
The astronauts aboard the Artemis II mission have brought a very familiar piece of tech into deep space, though it’s a lot less smart than the ones we use on Earth.
For the first time ever, NASA has fully cleared the iPhone 17 Pro Max for long-term use in orbit. This lets the crew document their trip to the moon using the exact same device millions of us have in our pockets.
The silver flagship made its on-camera debut about four hours into the mission. Viewers got a kick out of watching the phone float through the Orion cockpit, drifting from Canada’s own Jeremy Hansen past Reid Wiseman and Victor Glover before being caught by Christina Koch. Seeing an iPhone just hanging out in a spacecraft looks casual, but getting it there was a massive headache for engineers, according to the NYT.
NASA handed out the phones during quarantine back in March, but they are strictly for taking photos and videos of the lunar flyby. To meet strict safety rules, the phones have to stay in Airplane Mode the entire time (no internet, no Bluetooth, and definitely no FaceTime calls home).
This mission is a huge deal for Canada, as Colonel Jeremy Hansen is making history as the first Canadian and first non-American to ever travel beyond low Earth orbit.
The Long Road to Spaceflight
Getting an iPhone cleared for space is a pretty wild process. Engineers have to worry about unique dangers, like the glass screen shattering in microgravity. On Earth, broken glass falls to the floor; in space, those shards just float around, which is a nightmare for an astronaut’s eyes and lungs. To keep things safe, NASA thought about using Velcro to mount the phones, and during launch, at least one was zipped tight into a flight suit pocket so it wouldn’t become a flying projectile.
Using the latest iPhones shows a shift in how NASA handles modern gear. While the crew still has professional Nikon D5s and GoPros on hand, the iPhone 17 Pro Max gives them a familiar way to snap quick photos and share the mission with the world from anywhere on board.
Apple told the NYT it wasn’t actually involved in NASA’s approval process, but noted this is a major milestone. It’s the first time an iPhone has been fully certified for a long-term stay in deep space.
We’ve seen iPhones in space before, but usually on private flights. Back in 2021, Jared Isaacman (who now leads NASA) used an iPhone to snap photos of Earth during the Inspiration4 mission aboard SpaceX’s Dragon capsule. Way back in 2011, the very last space shuttle mission even carried a couple of iPhone 4s for an experiment.
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I wonder what the meta data looks like when taking a picture from space pointing home? LOL.
The risk of shattering the screen could have been mitigated by applying a thin film screen protector, so even if the glass breaks, it would not result in free floating tiny shards. Also on the back.