SpaceX Announces First-Ever Human Flight Over Planet’s Poles

SpaceX announced Monday that it will launch the first-ever crewed spaceflight over Earth’s poles, possibly before the end of this year. The private Crew Dragon mission will be led by a Chinese-born cryptocurrency entrepreneur named Chun Wang, and he will be joined by a polar explorer, roboticist and filmmaker who has befriended him in recent years.

Mission “Fram 2”, named after Norwegian research vessel FramThe SpaceX spacecraft will launch to a polar corridor from SpaceX’s launch facility in Florida, flying directly over both the North and South Poles. The mission will take three to five days, and is scheduled to fly over Antarctica near the Southern Hemisphere’s summer solstice, to provide maximum illumination.

The crew of four will, fittingly, travel aboard Crew Dragon. to bearnamed after Ernest Shackleton’s famous ship that became trapped in the Antarctic ice and eventually sank there about a century ago. The spacecraft will be equipped with a dome for photography and filming.

This will be SpaceX’s third free-flight mission on Crew Dragon, following the Inspiration4 mission funded and led by American entrepreneur Jared Isaacman in 2021 and the upcoming Polaris Dawn mission, which could launch later this month. In an interview, Wang said he modeled the Fram2 crew and public outreach programs on the model Isaacman created.

Bitcoin Mining Background

Wang was born in China and was one of the first to start mining bitcoin. “I first heard about bitcoin in 2011 and started mining almost immediately,” Wang says. “I did it for two years and then started building a mining pool.”

He founded China’s first bitcoin mining pool in 2013, F2Pool. This type of company allows miners with powerful computers to collectively “mine” bitcoins and share in the proceeds. Wang later led the company’s decentralization. He moved to Thailand in 2015, then to South Korea. Now a Maltese citizen, he has traveled almost around the world since 2021. Wang said he likes to spend a lot of time in Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago.

In an interview, Wang said he became a billionaire in 2021 after the price of Bitcoin, Dogecoin, and other cryptocurrencies soared. Wang added that he had been interested in space for a long time, so he started talking to SpaceX about buying a seat on a private Dragon mission. In 2023, the discussions matured, and Wang realized that if he bought a full mission, he could set its parameters.

He wanted to try something new, and he was flying a polar mission that matched his interest in Earth’s cold places. The highest ever flight by a human spacecraft was the Soviet Vostok 6 mission in 1963, when Valentina Tereshkova’s spacecraft reached 65.1 degrees. Now, Fram2 will fly directly over both poles repeatedly.

Meet the crew

Chun said he met two of the crew members on a ski trip several years ago, and another in Svalbard. They all share his interests in exploration, adventure and the poles. He said he hopes they will all help the mission contribute to humanity’s understanding of the Earth’s poles and inspire space travel.

The other three crew members are:

Jannik Mikkelsen, vehicle commanderA filmmaker and cinematographer, Mikkelsen specializes in remote and dangerous environments such as the Arctic, ocean, aviation and space. In 2019, she served as a payload specialist on the record-breaking circumnavigation of the North Pole, One More Orbit, in celebration of the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11.

Eric Phillips, vehicle commanderA professional polar adventurer and guide, Phillips has completed dozens of ski expeditions to the North and South Poles since his first polar expedition in 1992. He is a co-founder of the International Arctic Guides Association and co-creator of the Polar Expedition Classification Scheme.

Rabie Rouge, Mission SpecialistA robotics researcher from Berlin, Rogge is currently pursuing her PhD in Norway. Her work spans from leading a satellite mission to researching ocean robotics in the Arctic, reflecting her commitment to advancing technology in both the polar regions and space.

“I’m amazed that you can now become a commercial astronaut,” Mikkelsen said in an interview. “I have a long history of injuries, I was in a wheelchair for a year, and then I learned to walk again between the ages of three and five. I wish I could tell that girl that she could be an astronaut.”