Early images of the Artemis II launch showed an iPhone floating inside the spacecraft. Here’s how Apple’s smartphone got approved for spaceflight.
NASA is very strict when it comes to what items are flown into space with astronauts. With the Artemis II trip around the Moon, it’s marking the first time the agency is allowing the crew to carry iPhones in space.
This is a big deal, as NASA has strict rules about what actually goes into space, and thorough testing to match. On Friday, the New York Times reported on what the iPhone 17 Pro Max had to go through to be allowed in the cabin.
The process is “pretty involved and lengthy,” BioServe Space Technologies assistant research professor Tobias Niederwieser explained. The research institute had to undergo similar tests to have its payload on the Artemis I mission.
The first of four phases involves passing the safety panel, performing initial checks on the hardware. The second phase seeks out potential hazards, such as moving parts or shatterable materials like glass.
The third phase aims to come up with plans to avoid the issues raised in the second phase, if possible. The fourth phase then checks that the third-phase plans actually work.
Thorough, for good reason
The testing of iPhones for use in space surfaced in February, and was an unusual change for NASA. It is not only slow in testing hardware, but it’s positively glacial in approving new hardware for flights.m
For example, the newest standalone camera for flight on Artemis II was a Nikon DSLR from 2016, as well as some decade-old GoPro cameras.
Niederwieser said that the routine protects the crew and the spacecraft in a few ways. While shattered glass would usually fall to the ground under gravity, and users would be protected by shoes, shards would instead float dangerously in the air while in space.
Glass fragments could fly into the face of an astronaut in these circumstances. Or, if they collide with equipment, shards could cause problems, including getting stuck and interfering with other hardware’s range of motion.
Aside from what could go wrong if a device breaks in a gravity-free environment, there’s also concerns for things like radiation exposure for hardware heading into space. Since life depends on some systems, it has to be checked repeatedly to ensure it won’t break in space.
This is why you’ll still see the G3 PowerPC processor in use in orbit.
Apple told the report that it had no involvement in NASA’s approval process, but that it was the first time an iPhone had been qualified for orbit and extended use from Earth.
Apple does perform extensive durability testing on its devices, and revealed some of the extreme processes in July 2025. However, while it has been tested for drops, extreme temperatures, and even high-intensity lights, it doesn’t seem that Apple performs any anti-gravity testing.
A small step for NASA mobiles
The iPhones allowed by NASA are not being used in a mission-critical way. The units will be used by the astronauts to document the experience and to capture important moments.
There’s no opportunity for the iPhones to be used in other, more conventional ways, though. They will not be allowed to connect to the Internet or Bluetooth while in space.
Outside of getting NASA approval, smartphones have made it to space in the past, but chiefly under private operations.
This includes a 2021 Inspiration4 mission that used an iPhone to photograph the Earth. The final space shuttle mission in 2011 also flew with two iPhone 4 units for an experiment.