I adore Nikon, but always wondered how they managed to be the only cameras in the US space program. Guess I know, they played hard ball on the firmware and delivered something nobody else was going to.
Could have just been that was the first one they bought, and they wanted to keep using similar models from the shuttle era until now.
Like, the cameras used during the Apollo program were hasselblads because that's what one of the astronauts found in a nearby camera shop and it was then modified. I think it was after apollo 8 that the company even learned their cameras were being used for this, and offered assistance.