Artemis II astronaut snaps stunning far‑side Moon shot on an iPhone 17 Pro

NASA’s Artemis II crew has delivered the kind of Moon photo most of us only dream of and it was taken on a regular smartphone.

During the mission’s recent lunar flyby, NASA astronaut Reid Wiseman captured a striking image of the Moon’s far side using an iPhone 17 Pro. The picture was taken from inside the Orion spacecraft as it approached the Moon, with the crew turning off all the cabin lights to give their phone cameras the best possible chance.

NASA previously allowed Artemis II astronauts to bring their smartphones along, opening the door for exactly this kind of moment: consumer-grade hardware documenting deep space from a vantage point normally reserved for high-end space instruments.

In a livestream from the spacecraft, Wiseman held up his iPhone and showed the image to the camera, explaining that it was shot with the phone’s camera at 8x zoom. According to coverage cited from 9to5Mac, he specified that it was taken with the iPhone 17 Pro.

NASA later said the image shows the Chebyshev crater, a lunar impact site on the far side of the Moon — the hemisphere that never faces Earth. While spacecraft have imaged this region for decades, seeing it captured on what NASA described on social media as “nothing more than an iPhone 17 Pro, the same camera that fits in your pocket,” underscores how far mobile imaging has come.

The crew’s decision to switch off all interior lights in Orion for the shot also highlights how much even a phone camera can benefit from controlled lighting conditions, especially when trying to capture a distant, high-contrast subject like the Moon.

The image is just one highlight from Artemis II, which launched on April 1 for a 10-day journey with four astronauts aboard Orion. On April 6, after arriving in lunar space, the spacecraft flew farther from Earth than any mission in history, reaching 252,756 miles from the planet and breaking the distance record previously held by Apollo 13.

The crew completed their lunar flyby at around 9:35PM on April 6 and is now heading back toward Earth. NASA expects Artemis II to conclude with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean near San Diego on April 10.

NASA says more images of the Moon’s far side should be released over the coming days, so Wiseman’s iPhone shot is likely only the first of several perspectives we’ll see from this record-setting trip through lunar space.