NASA Will Finally Let Its Astronauts Bring iPhones To the Moon
3 97NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman has announced that astronauts on the upcoming Crew-12 and Artemis II missions will be allowed to carry iPhones and other modern smartphones into orbit and to the Moon -- a reversal of long-standing agency rules that had left crews relying on a 2016 Nikon DSLR and decade-old GoPros for the historic lunar flyby.
Isaacman framed the move as part of a broader push to challenge what he called bloated qualification requirements, where hardware approvals get mired in radiation characterization, battery thermal tests, outgassing reviews and vibration testing. "That operational urgency will serve NASA well as we pursue the highest-value science and research in orbit and on the lunar surface," he wrote.
3 comments
Spaceship mode? (Score: 5, Funny)
by arvn ( 586909 ) on Thursday February 05, 2026 @04:37PM (#65971214)
Will they have to put the phones in Spaceship mode?
Re: If I were an astronaut... (Score: 5, Funny)
by AcidFnTonic ( 791034 ) on Thursday February 05, 2026 @05:52PM (#65971432)
Sent from my die phone
Re:How Much Did Apple Pay For This (Score: 5, Insightful)
by jezwel ( 2451108 ) on Thursday February 05, 2026 @09:42PM (#65971720)
Your bias is showing. You might want to re-read the headline.
NASA Will Finally Let Its Astronauts Bring iPhones To the Moon
iPhone? Check. Other phones? No check.
Only the user-generated headline & summary mentions iPhones, whereas the source material states
NASA astronauts will soon fly with the latest smartphones
.It looks like the submitter has a bias towards iPhones.