The only hardware modification to the iPhone 17 Pro Maxes used by the astronauts on the Artemis II mission was that all the circuitry that emits radio frequencies (wifi, Bluetooth, cellular) was permanently disabled using custom firmware written specifically for these flight units. These iPhones had no menu option to toggle any of the RF circuitry back on, to be absolutely certain that there would be no accidental EMI/RF emissions that could interfere with Orion’s navigation systems, which rely on high-speed wireless data transfer for their internal sensors. The iPhone RF chips weren’t removed since the A-series chipsets are so integrated that removing these can brick the entire logic board or create thermal hot spots where the power management system gets confused. It was safer and more stable for NASA to keep the hardware intact but lobotomize the RF circuitry at the root level.
These iPhones were also put through a deep-cleaning process in which they were disassembled and reassembled in a clean room to make sure there were no stray particles or outgassing materials (like certain adhesives) that could contaminate the spacecraft's life-support filters.
Aside from that, the units were stock, with Ceramic Shield 2 display glass (no screen protectors), the standard lithium battery, etc. The USB-C ports remained functional since this is how the photos were transferred to the capsule’s local server, through a physical cable, before being beamed to Earth via the Deep Space Network. The A19 chip’s efficiency and the iPhone 17's thermal management were found to meet the 8-psi (pounds per square inch) pressure environment of the Orion capsule without modification.
One of the points for bringing iPhones on the mission was to see how well some stock commercial off-the-shelf electronics products do in space. The possibility of occasional bit-flips from going through the Van Allen radiation belt was OK since these weren't mission-critical devices.
amateurphotographer.com
