April 1, 2026 — Kennedy Space Center, Florida — As NASA’s Artemis II mission lifts off from Launch Complex 39B this evening, carrying astronauts Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen on humanity’s first return to the Moon since 1972, a quiet but historic announcement has been made: Sony has been selected as the official imaging technology partner for the Artemis lunar program, ending Nikon’s decades-long run as NASA’s primary camera supplier and marking the first time a Sony camera system will be sent to the vicinity of the Moon.
The announcement was made jointly by NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman and Sony Group Corporation CEO Hiroki Totoki during a pre-launch briefing at Kennedy Space Center this morning. It confirms that the Artemis II Orion capsule “Integrity” is carrying a custom-modified Sony Alpha 1 II system aboard — and that all subsequent Artemis missions, including the planned surface landings in 2028, will use Sony imaging equipment.
“When humans last walked on the Moon, a Hasselblad captured the moment,” said Isaacman. “When they return, a Sony will.”
The history of cameras on the Moon is, in many ways, the history of Hasselblad. NASA astronaut Walter “Wally” Schirra — a photography enthusiast who owned a personal Hasselblad 500C — first suggested the Swedish camera to NASA in 1962, after earlier cameras delivered disappointing results. NASA purchased several 500Cs and stripped them down, removing the leather covering, reflex mirror, auxiliary shutter, and viewfinder to reduce weight, while adding a custom film magazine capable of 70 exposures.
That modified Hasselblad flew aboard Mercury 8 in October 1962 and produced the first high-quality orbital photographs in NASA history. From that moment, Hasselblad and NASA were inseparable.
By the time Apollo 11 landed in the Sea of Tranquility on July 20, 1969, the partnership had produced the Hasselblad 500EL Data Camera (HDC) — a silver-finished, custom-built 70mm camera fitted with a Zeiss Biogon 60mm f/5.6 lens and a Réseau cross-hair plate for photogrammetric measurement. It was this camera, chest-mounted on Neil Armstrong’s spacesuit, that captured the most iconic photographs in human history: Buzz Aldrin’s visor reflection, the bootprint in the lunar dust, and the American flag standing on the airless surface.
The HDC was engineered to survive the Moon’s brutal conditions — temperatures swinging from -65°C to over 120°C, with no atmosphere to buffer the extremes. Special lubricants were developed to keep the mechanical shutter and film advance functioning in vacuum. The controls were enlarged for operation with pressurised spacesuit gloves. The silver finish was specifically chosen to regulate the camera’s internal temperature.
After each mission, the astronauts were instructed to remove the exposed film magazines but leave the camera bodies behind to save weight for lunar samples. Across all six Apollo landings — Apollo 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17 — a total of twelve Hasselblad camera bodies and lenses were left on the lunar surface, where they remain to this day, undisturbed in the regolith alongside bootprints and rover tracks.
When Apollo 17 lifted off from the Moon on December 14, 1972, it was the last time a camera would photograph the lunar surface from the surface. Until now.
NASA’s selection of Sony over the incumbent Nikon — which has supplied the agency’s handheld photography needs since the Space Shuttle era and currently provides Nikon Z9 bodies and a full complement of Nikkor lenses aboard the International Space Station — raised eyebrows. But the decision, NASA says, was driven by engineering requirements specific to deep space and lunar surface operations.
“The ISS is in low Earth orbit, 400 kilometres up, shielded by the Van Allen belts,” explained Dr. Sarah Chen, Director of NASA’s Imaging Systems Division. “Artemis operates in a completely different radiation environment. We needed a sensor architecture that could withstand sustained cosmic ray bombardment over a ten-day mission without cumulative degradation. Sony’s stacked CMOS sensor technology, with its copper wiring layer and integrated DRAM, demonstrated the highest radiation tolerance of any commercial imaging sensor we tested.”
Sony’s relationship with space imaging predates this announcement. In 2017, JAXA mounted a Sony A7S II on the exterior of the ISS’s KIBO Japanese Experiment Module — the first commercial off-the-shelf camera to be permanently installed outside the station. Enclosed in a custom aluminium housing with a radiator system, the A7S II operated in the vacuum of space, capturing 4K video and 12-megapixel stills of Earth while withstanding cosmic radiation, extreme thermal cycling, and the vibrations of orbital manoeuvres. That camera ran successfully for over two years, far exceeding its projected operational life.
“The KIBO deployment was our proof of concept,” said Kenji Tanaka, Vice President of Sony’s Imaging Products & Solutions division. “We learned what space does to a sensor, to a processor, to a lens coating. Every lesson from KIBO is in the Artemis camera.”
The Artemis imaging package centres on a purpose-built variant of the Sony Alpha 1 II, internally designated the ILCE-1M2S and codenamed “Selene” (after the Greek goddess of the Moon). While based on the commercial A1 II platform, the Selene has been extensively modified for deep space and — eventually — lunar surface operations.
Radiation-hardened sensor. The 50.1-megapixel stacked Exmor RS CMOS sensor has been fabricated with a custom radiation-shielded process. Sony’s semiconductor division in Kumamoto developed a modified copper interconnect layer that reduces single-event upsets (pixel “hits” from cosmic rays) by approximately 94% compared to the commercial sensor. The sensor’s on-board DRAM enables a rapid full-frame readout that allows the camera’s BIONZ XR processor to apply real-time cosmic ray rejection — essentially comparing sequential readouts and discarding anomalous pixel values before they reach the image file.
Thermal management. The body incorporates a passive heat-pipe system running from the sensor to an external radiator plate on the camera’s top surface. In the vacuum of space, where convection cooling is impossible, the heat pipe transfers thermal energy via phase-change fluid to a high-emissivity radiator. The system maintains the sensor between -5°C and +45°C across the full range of lighting conditions, from direct solar exposure to deep shadow.
Modified body construction. The magnesium alloy chassis has been replaced with a titanium-aluminium alloy shell, reducing weight while increasing structural rigidity and radiation shielding. The rubber grip material has been replaced with a textured silicone compound rated for vacuum exposure. All external seals use fluorocarbon O-rings rated to 10⁻⁶ Torr.
EVA-compatible controls. For surface missions (Artemis III and beyond), all buttons and dials have been enlarged and re-profiled for operation with pressurised spacesuit gloves — echoing the same modification Hasselblad pioneered sixty years ago. The shutter button travel has been increased to 4mm with a deliberate tactile break point, and a custom-moulded pistol grip attaches to the camera’s base for one-handed operation.
Lens system. The Selene ships with three modified FE-mount lenses:
Film simulation — wait, wrong brand. One unexpected feature: the Selene includes a suite of custom Creative Looks co-developed by Sony and NASA’s Scientific Visualization Studio. These include:
| Feature | Specification |
|---|---|
| Sensor | 50.1MP stacked CMOS (radiation-hardened) |
| Processor | BIONZ XR with cosmic ray rejection |
| ISO range | 100–102400 (native) |
| Continuous shooting | 30 fps (electronic), 10 fps (mechanical) |
| Video | 8K/30p, 4K/120p (10-bit 4:2:2 internal) |
| EVF | 9.44M-dot, 240fps (pressure-compatible eyecup) |
| Shutter | Mechanical + electronic; both vacuum-rated |
| Storage | CFexpress Type A (dual slot, vibration-dampened) |
| Weight | 658g (body only, with titanium shell) |
| Operating temp | -40°C to +85°C (with radiator) |
| Radiation tolerance | 100 krad total ionising dose |
| Operational life | 5+ years in deep space environment |
The Artemis II mission is a flyby — the crew will loop around the Moon on a free-return trajectory without entering orbit or landing. But the imaging objectives are extensive.
During the outbound transit, the crew will photograph Earth from increasing distances, recreating and extending the photographic record begun by Apollo 8. As Orion reaches its maximum distance from Earth — approximately 252,000 miles, surpassing the record set by Apollo 13 — Koch will attempt to capture what NASA is calling the “Pale Blue Dot II” image: Earth as a small, fragile disc against the blackness of space, echoing Voyager 1’s famous 1990 photograph but with vastly higher resolution.
During the lunar flyby, Glover and Hansen will photograph the far side of the Moon in unprecedented detail. While robotic missions have imaged the far side extensively, Artemis II will produce the first human-shot photographs of the lunar far side — portions of which will be seen directly by human eyes for the first time.
Commander Wiseman has a more personal assignment. As a self-described photography enthusiast, he has been tasked with recreating Anders’ Earthrise composition using the 14mm GM — this time from the Orion capsule rather than the Apollo 8 command module. NASA expects this image to become one of the defining photographs of the Artemis era.
While Artemis II is a flyby, NASA confirmed that the Sony partnership extends through Artemis III and IV — the first crewed lunar landings since 1972, currently targeted for 2028.
For surface operations, Sony is developing a fully sealed EVA variant of the Selene that will be chest-mounted on the Axiom-built spacesuit, just as the Hasselblad HDC was mounted on the Apollo A7L suit. The surface camera will include an integrated Réseau plate — the same cross-hair grid system used on the Apollo Hasselblads — for photogrammetric compatibility with NASA’s lunar mapping programme.
“There’s a direct line from the Hasselblad 500EL Data Camera that Neil Armstrong carried at Tranquility Base to the Sony Alpha that will be carried at the Artemis landing site near the lunar south pole,” said Dr. Chen. “The technology has evolved beyond recognition, but the mission is the same: bring the Moon back to Earth, one photograph at a time.”
When asked whether the Artemis Selene cameras will also be left behind on the lunar surface — as the Apollo Hasselblads were — Tanaka smiled.
“We hope so,” he said. “Twelve Hasselblads are on the Moon. We’d be honoured to join them.”