Most of us feel a bit panicked if we leave our phones at home while running a quick errand. Now imagine traveling 250 miles away to the International Space Station (ISS) and having to leave your device behind on Earth. For years, that was the standard for NASA astronauts, but the agency is finally changing its rules.
NASA official Jared Isaacman recently announced that crews on the upcoming Crew-12 and Artemis II missions can pack their personal smartphones for their journey. The goal is to give astronauts better ways to record their daily lives and stay connected. Isaacman explained that these devices will help the crew capture special moments for their families and share unique, inspiring videos with the world.
In the past, astronauts had to rely on heavy, professional Nikon DSLR cameras to take high-quality photos. While those cameras are excellent, they are bulky and hard to use for a quick, spontaneous shot. Smartphones are much smaller and easier to handle in zero gravity. This change should lead to more “human” photos—the kind of candid shots we all take every day—rather than just the official, staged pictures we usually see from space.
This policy update comes at a historic time. The Artemis II mission, currently planned for March, will be NASA’s first crewed trip to the moon since Apollo 17 in 1972. Because the crew can now bring their own devices, we can expect to see the first-ever smartphone photos taken from the moon’s orbit.
Technically, these won’t be the first phones in space. In 2013, a few tiny satellites used smartphone technology to orbit the Earth after a previous British project called STRaND-1 failed. However, this is the first time NASA is treating smartphones as personal tools for its astronauts. By letting the crew take their own phones, NASA is making life in a spacecraft feel a little more like home and giving the rest of us a front-row seat to the mission through a lens we all recognize.
