NASA greenlights iPhones for Moon missions
NASA has decided to allow astronauts to take modern iPhones on future missions, including the Artemis program that aims to return humans to the Moon, Qazinform News Agency correspondent reports.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced on X that astronauts will soon fly with the latest smartphones, starting with Crew-12 missions to the International Space Station and continuing with Artemis II.
“We are giving our crews the tools to capture special moments for their families and share inspiring images and video with the world,” said Isaacman.
Isaacman stressed that the move is not only symbolic. NASA, he said, challenged long-standing internal processes and managed to qualify modern consumer hardware for spaceflight on an expedited timeline.
“Just as important, we challenged long-standing processes and qualified modern hardware for spaceflight on an expedited timeline. 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,” added the NASA Administrator.
This is not the first time iPhones have gone to space. More than a decade ago, an iPhone 4 was certified for spaceflight and sent to the International Space Station aboard the space shuttle Atlantis on its final mission, STS- 135. The device carried the SpaceLab for iOS app, developed by Odyssey Space Research, which turned the phone into a research platform.
Astronauts on the ISS used the iPhone 4 to conduct experiments that relied on its built in sensors, including the gyro, accelerometer and cameras.
Earlier, Qazinform News Agency reported that NASA announced a competition with total prize fund of $750,000.
