David Cooper

that they were designed and built by NASA engineers.

But they decided that they were missing an opportunity.

And earlier this year, NASA changed its policy to make it less restrictive, make it easier to approve certain devices to go on board.

And that meant that astronauts on the International Space Station and Artemis II were allowed to take iPhones.

And so they issued them iPhone 17 Pro Maxes, so the best phone that Apple sells now.

They gave each astronaut one.

And at various points during the mission, if you're watching the live stream, you can kind of see them floating through the cabin.

And many of the photos that they're taking, including, you know, from the window of the moon, of the earth, of each other, they're in fact, they're using the iPhones, which kind of gives them a different form.

And they have Nikon D5s.

They have a couple of those on board.

They have a Nikon Z7.

So they have full on, you know, DSLR and mirrorless cameras as well with big honking long lenses.

But it's the iPhones that seem to be, you know, being used most often.

They pull them out of their pockets and their pants.

They take a quick picture, put it in and continue on working.

I was watching Jeremy Hansen flip through his photos on his tablet at one point.

And so there's only so much bandwidth available.

And a lot of it has to be devoted to, you know, keeping the spacecraft safe, data back and forth, doing the science, supporting the live stream as well.

The engineering cameras on the outside, their GoPros that are on the end of the solar panels looking back.

And so they're not sitting there making FaceTime calls, and they're not surfing the internet on these devices.