Apple (AAPL) iPhones will be journeying where no smartphones have gone before—on a trip around the moon during next month’s Artemis II mission by NASA.
“NASA astronauts will soon fly with the latest smartphones, beginning with Crew-12 and Artemis II,” said NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman in a post on X. “We are giving our crews the tools to capture special moments for their families and share inspiring images and video with the world. 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.”
Artemis II is slated to launch in March with a crew of three Americans and one Canadian. The astronauts will circle the moon during the 10-day trip to test hardware and systems for a future trip to the surface. It was originally scheduled to launch in early February.
The crew members will carry iPhones provided to NASA from Apple.
“This is a first for us, although it has been done safely aboard commercial space flights for around a decade now,” NASA spokesperson Bethany Stevens said, according to a report by Bloomberg.
Crew-12 is slated to launch on February 11 aboard the SpaceX (SPACE) Dragon craft. This mission will send four crew members to the International Space Station for six months.
NASA astronauts Jessica Meir and Jack Hathaway will serve as spacecraft commander and pilot, respectively. They will be accompanied by European Space astronaut Sophie Adenot and Roscosmos cosmonaut Andrey Fedyaev. They will both serve as mission specialists. Crew-12 will join Expedition 74 crew members currently aboard the space station. It will mark the thirteenth flight of the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft with people as part of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program.