Elon Musk’s SpaceX has successfully launched the Fram2 mission with an all-civilian crew onboard to orbit the Earth from pole to pole, a feat that professional astronauts have never tried. The SpaceX Dragon, riding on top of a Falcon 9 rocket, lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Monday night.
The spacecraft carried the team into a 90-degree polar orbit. It will travel from the North Pole to the South Pole at an altitude of 267 miles. Each orbit will take about 46 minutes. It’s a crew of sorts – crypto entrepreneur Chun Wang, Norwegian film director and cinematographer Jannicke Mikkelsen, robotics researcher Rabea Rogge, and professional polar adventurer Eric Philips.
They will view and photograph the Earth’s polar regions from low-Earth orbit and conduct 22 experiments focused on ‘advancing human health and performance in space, particularly for future long-duration missions, including the first mission to take x-rays of the human body in space, growing mushrooms in microgravity and studying atmospheric phenomena.
X-Rays, Health and Mushrooms in SpaceX Orbit Mission
According to an official statement, the 4-men crew will observe Earth’s polar regions over 430 kilometers above the surface. The Crew Dragon Resilience will travel from the North to the South Pole in under an hour. The crew will take the first x-ray in space, perform exercise studies to maintain muscle and skeletal mass and grow mushrooms in microgravity.
SpaceX’s mission will last nearly four days. However, the exact landing date hasn’t been announced. With the capsule to splash down in the Pacific Ocean off the southern California coast, SpaceX will attempt its first-ever west coast recovery of a Dragon crew.
