Here’s why NASA is sending an iPad to the Moon aboard Artemis 1
I’m writing this post on Sunday evening, but hopefully by the time you’re reading this Monday morning, NASA’s Artemis 1 rocket will be on its way to the Moon, as it’s currently scheduled to launch at 8:33 AM EDT. (Monday AM update: the launch attempt has been scrubbed. Boo.) Artemis 1 is the first of a series of missions to the Moon that, if all goes according to plan, will in a few years return human beings to the surface of the Moon for the first time since 1972. This first mission will be a full test of the rocket and the Orion capsule, just without the crew. The Orion capsule will travel to the Moon, orbit it, and eventually return home for a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. The next mission, Artemis 2, will repeat this mission, but with humans aboard. On this first un-crewed mission, there will be several science experiments, and one of them will involve an iPad onboard the Orion capsule.
Here’s how NASA describes the Callisto Technology Demonstration:
The industry-funded payload will be located on Orion’s center console and includes a tablet that will test Webex by Cisco video conferencing software to transmit video and audio from the Mission Control Center at Johnson, and custom-built hardware and software by Lockheed Martin and Amazon that will test Alexa, Amazon’s voice-based virtual assistant, to respond to the transmitted audio.
And:
Traveling in deep space, it would take too long for Alexa on Orion to use the cloud back on Earth, so Callisto will use NASA’s Deep Space Network and a local database aboard the spacecraft to communicate with Alexa and respond. The payload’s on-board hardware has been hardened to protect it for the radiation environment on Orion’s deep space journey.
Webex will connect and conference the onboard tablet with Webex devices and whiteboards inside a room in the Mission Control Center, demonstrating how video collaboration, with compression technology, can be used over the Deep Space Network.
I guess that neither NASA nor Lockheed Martin are permitted to use the word “iPad,” but come on. That’s an iPad Pro.
Though this is the furthest away from Earth an Apple device will have ever gone, Apple devices are no stranger to the final frontier. If you watch any of the crewed SpaceX missions to and from the International Space Station, you’ll spot iPads in the cabin of Crew Dragon space craft. Astronauts use a custom SpaceX app to access important documentation. The recent SpaceX Inspiration 4 private space mission conducted health experiments using an Apple Watch, an iPhone, and an iPad mini. And 31 years ago to the day that I’m writing this, the very first email was sent from space using a Macintosh Portable onboard the Space Shuttle Atlantis.
Hopefully we’ll all get to see humans once again walking on the Moon in a few years, and it won’t surprise me at all if they bring Apple devices with them when they do.