A team consisting of a blockchain entrepreneur, a cinematographer, a polar adventurer, and a robotics researcher is set to make history by flying around Earth’s poles aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule by the end of the year, CBS News reports, citing the company.
This pioneering mission will mark the first time humans have observed the ice caps and extreme polar environments from orbit, SpaceX says.
The flight, set to launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida, will be headed by Chun Wang, a prominent bitcoin pioneer and founder of f2pool and stakefish — two of the largest Bitcoin mining pools and Ethereum staking providers, according to the crew’s website.
“Wang aims to use the mission to highlight the crew’s explorational spirit, bring a sense of wonder and curiosity to the larger public and highlight how technology can help push the boundaries of exploration of Earth and through the mission’s research,” SpaceX said on its website.
Wang’s crewmates are Norwegian cinematographer Jannicke Mikkelsen, Australian adventurer Eric Philips and Rabea Rogge, a German robotics researcher. All four have an interest in extreme polar environments and plan to carry out related research and photography from orbit.
The mission, known as “Fram2” in honor of a Norwegian ship used to explore both the Arctic and Antarctic regions, will last three to five days and fly at altitudes between about 265 and 280 miles.
“This looks like a cool & well thought out mission. I wish the @framonauts the best on this epic exploration adventure! Polaris Program, Inspiration4, Axiom, & now Fram2showcase what commercial missions can achieve thanks to @SpaceX’s reusability and NASA’s vision with the commercial crew program,” Jared Isaacman, the billionaire philanthropist who charted the first private SpaceX mission — Inspiration4 — and who plans to blast off on a second flight — Polaris Dawn — later this month, said on X.
Like the Inspiration4 mission before them, Wang and his crewmates will fly in a Crew Dragon equipped with a transparent cupula giving them a picture-window view of Earth below and deep space beyond.
No astronauts or cosmonauts have ever viewed Earth from the vantage point of a polar orbit, one tilted, or inclined, 90 degrees to the equator. Such orbits are favored by spy satellites, weather stations and commercial photo-reconnaissance satellites because they fly over the entire planet as it rotates beneath them.
The high-inclination record for a piloted flight was set in 1963 by Russia’s Vostok 6 spacecraft carrying cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space. Her spacecraft carried her 65 degrees to either side of the equator over 48 orbits. The U.S. record is shared by four space shuttle missions that flew in orbits inclined 57 degrees to the equator.
The International Space Station never flies beyond 51.6 degrees north and south latitude. NASA planned to launch a space shuttle on a classified military mission around the poles in 1986, but the flight was canceled in the wake of the Challenger disaster.
“The North and South Poles are invisible to astronauts on the International Space Station, as well as to all previous human spaceflight missions except for the Apollo lunar missions but only from far away,” the Fram2 website says. “This new flight trajectory will unlock new possibilities for human spaceflight.”
SpaceX has reached milestones in its crewed spaceflight program, launching 13 piloted missions with a total of 50 people, including astronauts, cosmonauts, and citizens. The number nine missions in collaboration with NASA to the International Space Station (ISS), three commercial flights to the lab, and the Inspiration4 mission, which was chartered by Jared Isaacman.
Isaacman is set to lead another historic flight on August 26, which will be a fully commercial mission that aims to feature the first civilian spacewalks. Meanwhile, NASA is preparing for its next Crew Dragon flight to the ISS, scheduled around September 24. This upcoming mission underscores the continued collaboration between SpaceX and NASA in advancing human space exploration.
