NASA astronauts can now take their phones with them on lunar missions.

Get ready to take selfies that are out of this world. NASA astronauts will be able to take their smartphones into space for the first time, starting with the Crew-12 and Artemis II missions.

Crew II is expected to head to the International Space Station next week, while the Artemis II mission, which would take humans around the moon for the first time since the 1960s, has been postponed until March.

“We are giving crews the tools to capture special moments for their families and share inspiring images and videos with the world,” NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman wrote in X.

Newer iPhones and Android devices will allow crews to collect images and video on a more voluntary basis. That means, for those of us at home, the upcoming space trips could be some of NASA’s best-documented trips.

Imagine how cool (or creepy) it would be for an astronaut to transform himself into a TikTok star in zero gravity or take an ultra-wide selfie from a spaceship. For those of us who work in government bureaucracy, it’s equally interesting that NASA approved this rule change pretty quickly.

“Equally important,” Isaacman wrote, “is that we have challenged a lengthy process and validated state-of-the-art hardware for spaceflight on an accelerated schedule.” “This operational urgency will benefit NASA as we pursue the highest value science and research in orbit and on the lunar surface.”

It’s understandable that it’s difficult to get approval to send new technologies into space. If even one little thing goes wrong, spaceflight can go terribly wrong. According to Ars Technica, the newest cameras up to this point for this mission have been the 10-year-old Nikon DSLR and GoPro. Although it’s by no means esoteric, there’s something more natural and quirky about using a smartphone.

But this is not the first time a smartphone has gone into space. SpaceX allows smartphones on private astronaut missions.