NASA astronauts can now bring their phones with them on their mission to the moon

Get ready for some out-of-this-world selfies. NASA astronauts will be allowed to bring their smartphones into space for the first time, starting with the Crew-12 and Artemis II missions.

Crew-12 is expected to head to the International Space Station next week, while the highly anticipated Artemis II mission – which will bring humans around the moon for the first time since the 1960s – has been postponed until March.

“We are giving our crews the tools to capture special moments for their families and share inspiring photos and videos with the world,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman wrote on the X website.

With the latest iPhones and Android devices on hand, the crew will be able to be more spontaneous in collecting photos and video, which means that for those of us back home, these upcoming trips into space may be some of NASA’s most well-documented yet.

Imagine how cool (or embarrassing) it would be if astronauts turned themselves into TikTok stars in zero gravity, or if they took ultra-wide-angle selfies in the spacecraft. For those who work in government bureaucracy, it is equally exciting that NASA apparently agreed to change this rule so quickly.

“Just as importantly, we challenged long-term operations and modern spaceflight-qualifying hardware on an accelerated timeline,” Isaacman wrote. “This operational urgency will serve NASA well as we pursue the highest value science and research in orbit and on the lunar surface.”

It stands to reason that it would be difficult to approve new technology to go into space, and if even a small thing goes off course, space travel could go terribly wrong. Until now, the newest cameras that were supposed to do these tasks were Nikon DSLRs and GoPros that were made a decade ago, according to Ars Technica. This is by no means mysterious, but there is something more spontaneous and whimsical about using a smartphone.

However, this is not the first time smartphones have gone into space. SpaceX has authorized smartphones for private astronaut missions.