August 14, 2024
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SpaceX plans to launch first-ever manned spacecraft above Earth’s poles
The Fram2 mission, due to launch in late 2024, will be the first manned spaceflight to explore the Earth’s poles.
SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft sits atop the company’s Falcon 9 rocket in a hangar, minutes before blasting off to the launch pad.
SpaceX plans to make spaceflight history later this year when it launches the first manned mission to explore Earth’s poles.
The four-seater flight, announced by SpaceX today (August 12), is named “Fram2,” after a Norwegian ship that made pioneering voyages to the Arctic and Antarctic between 1893 and 1912.
“Fram 2 will be commanded by Chung Wang, a Maltese entrepreneur and adventurer,” SpaceX wrote in today’s mission summary. “Wang aims for the mission to highlight the inquisitive spirit of the crew, inspire wonder and curiosity among a broader public, and highlight research into technologies and missions that push the boundaries of Earth exploration.”
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Wang’s co-pilot, Jannicke Mikkelsen of Norway, will be the spacecraft’s pilot, Eric Phillips of Australia, and mission specialist Rabea Rogge of Germany. All four are new to spaceflight, SpaceX said.
If all goes according to plan, Fram 2 will launch later this year aboard a Falcon 9 rocket from Florida’s Space Coast, sending the quartet into orbit aboard a Crew Dragon capsule that will not be attached to the International Space Station (ISS) and will orbit Earth on its own.
“During the three-to-five day mission, the crew will observe Earth’s poles through Dragon’s cupola at an altitude of 425-450 kilometers (249-264 miles) and utilize the insights of astrophysicists and citizen scientists to study unusual lights similar to the aurora borealis,” SpaceX wrote in a mission description.
“The crew will investigate a continuum of green debris and mauve ribbons of radiation comparable to a phenomenon known as STEVE (Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement), measured at an altitude of about 400-500 kilometers (249-311 miles) above Earth’s atmosphere,” it added.
The Fram 2 crew will also study how spaceflight affects the human body, which SpaceX says will include taking the first-ever X-ray images of a human in space.
Fram 2 will be SpaceX’s sixth private astronaut mission. Previous missions include the free flyer Inspiration 4, which launched in September 2021; Ax-1, Ax-2 and Ax-3, operated by Houston company Axiom Space and which flew to and from the ISS in April 2022, May 2023 and January-February of this year, respectively; and Polaris Dawn, another free flyer currently scheduled for launch on August 26.
Polaris Dawn is the first of three planned missions under the privately funded Polaris program, with all three being funded and led by billionaire tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, who also did the same with Inspiration 4.
SpaceX has also launched nine astronaut missions to the ISS for NASA, starting with the Demo-2 test flight to an orbital laboratory in 2020.
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