During NASA's "Artemis II" manned mission around the moon, astronauts aboard the "Orion" spacecraft used iPhone 17 Pro Max to take a number of astronaut selfies with the Earth as the background, which attracted widespread attention.
The mission successfully returned after completing its orbit around the moon last week. Apple CEO Tim Cook and Senior Vice President of Worldwide Marketing Greg Joswiak also sent congratulations via social media and emphasized the iPhone's participation in this mission.
Cook said on the social platform Joswiak wrote that he was honored that NASA astronauts took the iPhone into space, jokingly calling it "one small step for the iPhone, one giant leap for space selfies."
In February of this year, NASA announced that the iPhone had been fully certified and could be used in orbit for extended periods of time. According to reports, each of the four crew members on board the Orion spacecraft is equipped with an iPhone 17 Pro Max for personal photography and video shooting. Some of the selfies released by NASA show Artemis II Commander Reid Wiseman and mission specialist Christina Koch looking back at Earth in front of the Orion main cabin window. Flickr data for these photos indicate that they were taken on April 2, the second day of the mission, using the front camera of the iPhone 17 Pro Max.
At the same time, a large number of other mission images released by NASA were taken by professional equipment, including cameras such as Nikon D5, Nikon Z9, and GoPro HERO4 Black. They include distant views with the earth as the main subject, and images of the moon and the earth in the same frame.
Artemis II is NASA's first manned mission to the moon since 1972, marking the U.S.'s resumption of manned missions around the moon after nearly half a century. In this mission, the "Orion" spacecraft arrived near the far side of the moon on Monday and broke the record for the farthest manned flight from the earth in human history. However, because the spacecraft does not have the ability to land on the moon, the entire mission was a flyby around the moon rather than a landing on the moon. After completing its planned flight orbit, "Orion" safely returned to Earth on Friday.