Two upcoming missions could see astronauts using smartphones to capture lunar selfies and more.
Television and home video editor Ty Pendlebury joined CNET Australia in 2006 and moved to New York to be part of CNET in 2011. He tests, reviews and writes about the latest televisions and audio equipment. When he’s not playing Call of Duty, he eats whatever cuisine he can get his hands on. He has a cat named after one of the best TVs ever made.
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Astronauts will now be able to carry modern smartphones on space missions, according to a tweet this week from NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. Isaacman said the policy would start with SpaceX Crew-12 and Artemis II.
The SpaceX Crew-12 mission is scheduled to launch on February 11 and will carry four astronauts to the International Space Station. NASA’s Artemis II mission expected to launch in March; it will send four astronauts on a 10-day flight that will circle the Moon and return to Earth.
“We give our teams the tools to capture special moments for their families and share inspiring images and videos with the world,” Isaacman wrote.
NASA astronauts will soon be flying with the latest smartphones, starting with Crew-12 and Artemis II. We give our teams the tools to capture special moments for their families and share inspiring images and videos with the world. Just as importantly, we challenged long-standing practices…
– Jared Isaacman, NASA Administrator (@NASAAdmin) February 5, 2026
An Apple representative said in an email to CNET that this was “the first time [the] iPhone is fully qualified for extended use in orbit and beyond. »
“Until now, astronauts have been largely limited to old cameras and older imaging equipment,” the spokesperson said.
NASA did not mention specific phone brands or models in its tweet.
Ars Technica reported that space missions currently use Nikon DSLR and GoPro 2016 cameras.
Photography has played an important role in space missions since the Apollo missions of the 1960s and 1970s. The Apollo 11 astronauts, the first humans to walk on the Moon, captured iconic photographs from their famous July 1969 mission with specially modified Hasselblad cameras.