Private Astronaut Crew Lifts Off To Circle Earth’s Poles

Four private astronauts lifted off from Kennedy Space Center this evening on a SpaceX Crew Dragon. They are the first humans to orbit the Earth circling around the North and South Poles, giving them a unique view of the planet. Fram2 takes its name from a Norwegian ship, Fram, that explored the Arctic and Antarctic at the turn of the 20th Century. The privately-funded mission includes a Chinese-born billionaire who now is a citizen of Malta, a Norwegian, a German, and an Australian.

Despite a bleak weather forecast, liftoff of Crew Dragon Resilience took place at the first launch opportunity tonight at 9:46 pm ET.  Crew Dragons are reusable and this is the fourth flight of Resilience.

Liftoff of Fram2 and the @framonauts! pic.twitter.com/XBL5juCnHQ

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 1, 2025

Most of the information about the flight is being posted by SpaceX on SpaceX.com or on X (@SpaceX) and on the accounts of the four “Framonauts”: cryptocurrency billionaire Chun Wang (@satofishi), Mission Commander; Norwegian cinematographer Jannicke Mikkelsen (@astro_jannicke), Vehicle Commander; German engineer and Arctic roboticist Rabea Rogge (@rprogge), Vehicle Pilot; and Australian explorer Eric Philips (@Icetrek), Mission Specialist and Medical Officer.

Mikkelsen is the first female astronaut from Norway and Rogge the first from Germany. All four have experience in remote environments and share a connection to Svalbard, Norway.

Chun organized and is paying for the mission. He said during a pre-launch briefing on X’s Spaces platform on Friday that he’s had a lifelong curiosity and fascination with pushing boundaries. “As a kid I used to stare at the blank white space at the bottom of a map and wonder what was out there.” He eventually went to the South Pole in 2021 and the North Pole in 2023. “Fram2 isn’t just about going into space, but pushing boundaries and sharing knowledge.”

Fram2 will not visit the International Space Station so the mission duration is limited by the supplies they have onboard, including air. That means SpaceX had to be sure weather would be good not only for launch, but for landing several days later.

This mission is scheduled to last 3.5-5.5 days and will be the first Crew Dragon to land off the coast of California instead of Florida. SpaceX is moving all of its Dragon splashdowns, crew and cargo, to California, so they can better control where Dragon’s trunk lands. The unpressurized trunk separates from the capsule during reentry to expose the heat shield.  The way they’ve been doing it since 2019 when they introduced a new version of the capsule (Dragon 2), the separation takes place while the capsule is still in orbit. The trunk remains in orbit until it makes an uncontrolled landing somewhere, sometime, on the planet. Astrophysicist Jonathan McDowell (@planet4589 on X and Bluesky) of Jonathan’s Space Report has a very useful chart of the fate of the trunks showing that in five cases debris was recovered on land, including the most recent Crew Dragon, Crew-9. They splashed down on March 18. The trunk reentered on March 24, with debris landing in Erg Chech, Algeria.

The original version of Dragon, used for cargo flights to the ISS, splashed down in California. SpaceX moved splashdowns to Florida to be closer to their refurbishment and launch facilities.  They lose that advantage, but gain another — weather is often better in California. They have three splashdown locations available.

Another first is that after the capsule is aboard the recovery vessel, the crew will exit the spacecraft by themselves instead of waiting for assistance. They will get out of their seats, remove their footrests, get their survival gear, open the hatch, and get out and walk to the medical bay unassisted to demonstrate it’s possible, although they will not be as deconditioned as most astronauts who spend months instead of days in weightlessness.

That is one of 22 experiments they’ll conduct during their flight. Among the others are operating the first X-ray machine in space, conducting “exercises” in Dragon for the first time by restricting blood flow, and growing nutritious oyster mushrooms, all of which may have applications for very long duration missions to Mars, for example.

Mikkelsen will focus on photographing auroras. Astronauts on the International Space Station have taken amazing auroral images from their vantage point at 51.6 degrees inclination (the angle of the orbit to the equator), but Fram2 will fly directly over the poles at 90 degrees. During Friday’s Spaces briefing, she said she has arranged with ground-based observatories and 2.2 million auroral citizen scientists to take their own photos when Fram2 is flying overhead so they can have simultaneous imagery from above and below. She also has been collaborating with NASA astronaut Don Pettit, a renowned space photographer who is on the ISS right now, testing out various camera settings.

She said she’s glad she’s not a STEM-educated person. She has a master’s degree in cinematography, which is “a very technical subject,” but is considered art. “I’m honored to represent the non-STEM-educated in space and be the first educator cinematographer in space.”

SpaceX livestreamed the launch and said they would livestream the splashdown, but there’s no indication of whether any other live coverage of the mission will be available. The spacecraft is equipped with a Starlink laser terminal to connect to SpaceX’s Starlink system and provide high speed Internet so they might post updates on their X accounts.