SpaceX Astronaut Captures Stellar Photo of Earth, Shot on iPhone

The first few images released by the SpaceX team were shot with a Nikon DSLR, but the images shared in the most recent drop by mission commander Jared Isaacman were captured using an iPhone 12.

The crew of SpaceX’s Inspiration4 has started sharing some images and videos captured from space during the company’s world’s first civilian orbital mission last month.

As spotted by Digital Trends, the image shared by Isaacman were captured with his smartphone through the all-glass dome that sits underneath the nose cone of the Crew Dragon spacecraft that was the teams home during their three-day journey in orbit or Earth.

Photo by Jared Isaacman

The nose cone, which is seen in the top right corner of the image above that was shared by Isaacman, opens up once the craft is in space to offer the crew on board an incredible panoramic view of planet Earth (and space) through the glass dome. From there, the crew captured over 700 photos and video clips at a distance of 357 miles (575 kilometers) above the planet’s surface, making them images that have been captured from farther away from the planet than even the ones NASA astronauts have shared from the International Space Station.

In addition to the still photo, Isaccman had also published a short video clip from the journey in late September that was also shot on the iPhone 12 while he and the crew were drifting over Brazil.

“Such a privilege to see our planet from this perspective,” he writes. “We need to take far better care of our home planet and also reaching for the stars.”

There are currently four pages of images on the Inspiration4 Flickr Page with hundreds more planned to be shared there and on the organization’s official Twitter account. It remains to be seen if there will be more images only shot with iPhone and Nikon DSLRs, or if the public will be treated to images captured on a wider range of devices.

For those interested in learning more about what it’s like to shoot photos from space, be sure to read a previous story with Chris Hadfield that features an inside look at the task.

Image credits: Header photo by Inspiration4 mission commander Jared Isaacman via Creative Commons.