Ahead of the crew is 3-5 days aboard the Dragon in low-Earth orbit, where they will seek to become the first humans to make a spaceflight over Earth’s poles.
A SpaceX spacecraft carrying four international astronauts is on a pioneering journey circling Earth over its poles after launching Monday night from Florida.
Financed and led by cryptocurrency billionaire Chun Wang, a mission known as Fram2 blasted off into orbit with assistance from a SpaceX rocket.
Fram2 follows in the footsteps of other commercial spaceflight ventures, including Inspiration4 and Polaris Dawn – two missions also bankrolled and led by billionaire Jared Isaacman. In fact, the Fram2 crew is now traveling on the same Dragon spacecraft that the Polaris Dawn crew rode to orbit in September for a five-day mission in which they completed a historic spacewalk.
The Dragon vehicles, standing nearly 27 feet tall and about 13 feet wide, were developed by Elon Musk’s SpaceX with NASA funding to provide the U.S. space agency a ride for its astronauts to and from the International Space Station.
But the private Fram2 astronauts won’t be docking at the orbital laboratory.
Ahead of the crew is 3-5 days aboard the Dragon in low-Earth orbit, where they will seek to become the first humans to make a spaceflight over Earth’s poles.
Fram2 launches on polar-orbiting mission
With lightning flashing in the distance, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket got off the ground Monday night, propelling the Fram2 crew members into orbit before their Dragon capsule separated to use its own thrusters to continue onward, according to SpaceX.
The launch occurred right on schedule at 9:46 p.m. EDT, getting the rocket off the launch pad from NASA’s historic Launch Complex 39A at the space agency’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral just as storms rolled off shore.
Following liftoff, the Falcon 9’s first stage successfully landed on a SpaceX droneship station in the Atlantic Ocean so it can be reused on future launches.
What is the Fram2 mission?
For the first time ever, the four astronauts aboard the Dragon will explore Earth from a polar orbit as they fly from pole to pole.
Fittingly, the mission is named after a Norwegian ship that sailed on expeditions to the North and South Poles in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The Fram (Norwegian for “forward”) made history at the time, traveling further north and south than any other vessel before it.
But the North and South Pole are notoriously difficult to spot from space.
Not only are the polar regions invisible to astronauts on the International Space Station, but to see them from a spacecraft requires a flight path that isn’t as close to the equator, as is the norm.
The mission will aim to fly at a 90-degree circular orbit, meaning it will be exactly perpendicular to the equator. While in orbit, the crew plans to observe Earth’s polar regions from about 267 miles above the ground – an altitude that will allow the Dragon to fly from the North Pole to the South Pole in just more than 46 minutes.
Who is on the crew of Fram2?
Fram2 is under the command of Malta-based entrepreneur Chun Wang, who paid an undisclosed amount of money to bankroll the mission with SpaceX. Born in China, Wang built his fortune with Bitcoin mining pools.
The three other spacefarers joining Wang are Norwegian filmmaker Jannicke Mikkelsen, German robotics researcher Rabea Rogge and Australian adventurer Eric Philips.
No one on the Fram2 mission has ever been to space before.
What will the Fram2 crew do in space?
Wang and his crew will conduct 22 research experiments centered on how spaceflight and microgravity affect the human body that will provide insights for future long-duration missions deep into the cosmos.
That includes capturing the first human X-ray images in space and growing mushrooms in microgravity to see if the food can be a viable crop in orbit. The astronauts will also exercise on the Dragon while studying blood flow restriction in an experiment to attempt to preserve muscle and bone mass.
How long will the Fram2 mission last?
The Fram2 astronauts are due to spend up to five days in orbit before landing off the coast of California.
Most crewed space launches send astronauts to dock at the International Space Station, where their return to Earth can safely be delayed and rescheduled as needed, as famously just became the case for the Boeing Starliner astronauts. The space station is well-provisioned, with uncrewed spacecraft routinely…
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