NASA finally lets astronauts bring their own phones to space

Most people wouldn’t dream of leaving their phones behind, even for a short drive. However, NASA astronauts have had to do just that when traveling to work 250 miles away at the International Space Station—until now.

In a post on X, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced that astronauts on the Crew-12 and Artemis II missions will be allowed to bring smartphones on their journeys to the ISS and beyond.

“We are giving our crews the tools to capture special moments for their families and share inspiring images and videos with the world,” Isaacman stated.

Smartphone images have been captured in space before; a trio of miniature, phone-based satellites succeeded in Earth orbit in 2013, following the failure of the earlier British STRaND-1 project. However, the upcoming Artemis II mission will provide a new milestone: the first smartphone images captured from the Moon’s orbit.

The launch, tentatively scheduled for March, will mark the agency’s first crewed moon mission since Apollo 17 in 1972.

Personal devices will be much easier for the crew to use for high-quality still images compared to the bulky Nikon DSLRs they were previously restricted to. This change is expected to lead to more spontaneous photos that can be readily shared with friends and family on Earth.