Elon Musk’s SpaceX is preparing to launch its inaugural human spaceflight mission to traverse the Earth’s polar regions, backed and commanded by cryptocurrency investor Chun Wang.
The mission, named Fram2 in honor of a Norwegian polar expedition ship that operated between the late 1800s and early 1900s, is scheduled to lift off on a Falcon 9 rocket from Florida at 9:46 p.m. local time on Monday. It will carry a crew of four private astronauts. During this three to five-day journey, the astronauts will fly over and study both the North and South Poles while also conducting research on how spaceflight affects human health. “My own journey has been influenced by a lifelong curiosity and an eagerness to explore boundaries,” Wang shared during a livestreamed mission overview on X last Friday. “As a child, I often looked at the blank white space at the bottom of the world map, wondering what lay beyond.”
According to Jon Edwards, a SpaceX vice president, the closest any astronaut has previously come to flying over the poles was during early Soviet missions that included cosmonauts like Yuri Gagarin. Wang, originally from China and who shared that he became a citizen of Malta in 2023, co-founded F2Pool, one of the largest Bitcoin mining pools, in 2013. He will be joined by Norwegian director and cinematographer Jannicke Mikkelsen, Australian adventurer Eric Philips, and German graduate student Rabea Rogge, all of whom are embarking on their first spaceflights. “I’m excited to be the first person in history to capture images of the North Pole and South Pole from space,” Mikkelsen expressed. This mission contributes to SpaceX’s extensive record of human spaceflight missions, most of which have been for NASA. In addition to transporting astronauts to and from the International Space Station, the company has also facilitated two missions for billionaire Jared Isaacman, who was nominated by President Donald Trump for the NASA administrator position.
After completing their mission, the crew will return to Earth, splashing down off the West Coast of the United States.
“Each of these missions represents a small step toward making space travel as accessible as air travel, where anyone can fly,” stated Jessica Jensen, vice president of customer operations and integration at SpaceX.
