The Many Times Apple Products Left Earth

There’s something delightful about seeing astronauts take incredible photos of Earth with the same model of iPhone I stuff in my back pocket. 

This week, the four astronauts aboard the Integrity spacecraft used an iPhone 17 Pro Max to capture selfies during their historic journey around the moon.

It’s one of the first times NASA allowed astronauts to use personal smartphones on a spaceflight, but this is not the first time iPhones left the planet.

In this episode of One More Thing, embedded above, I go over the many Apple gadgets that have made the flight to space over the years for different missions, including a Macintosh Portable that sent the first email from space.

For the Artemis II mission, select iPhone photos were shared on NASA’s Flickr account. Some shots were stunning portraits of the crew looking back at Earth. Others were group shots or pics documenting their work. 

The iPhone was not the best camera on board (the coolest shots of the moon came from Nikon DSLRs), but it became notable since personal smartphones were cleared for use in space by NASA for the first time in February. And seeing astronauts use the front-facing selfie camera to capture their time sure captured the awe of many watching the mission livestream from Earth. 

For more One More Thing, subscribe to our YouTube page to catch Bridget Carey breaking down the latest Apple news and issues every Friday.