SpaceX will send four people into space later this year for a transpolar space mission.

SpaceX plans to make space history later this year by launching the first crewed mission to explore Earth’s polar regions. The four-person mission, which SpaceX announced on August 12, 2024, is being called Fram2, in honor of the Norwegian ship that pioneered voyages to the North and South Poles between 1893 and 1912.

“Fram2 will be led by Chun Wang, an entrepreneur and adventurer from Malta,” SpaceX wrote in a mission description today. “Wang wants to use the mission to showcase the crew’s spirit of discovery, bring a sense of wonder and curiosity to the wider public, and highlight how technology can help push the boundaries of Earth exploration and through mission research to transform.” Joining Wang on the Fram2 team are Jannik Mikkelsen of Norway, who will serve as captain; Erik Phillips of Australia, the pilot; and Rabih Ruge of Germany, the mission specialist. All four are new to aviation, according to SpaceX.

If all goes according to plan, Fram2 will launch later this year on a Falcon 9 rocket from Florida’s Space Coast and the quartet will be sent into orbit in a Crew Dragon capsule. The spacecraft will not tether to the International Space Station (ISS), but will simply float around Earth. “During the 3-5 day mission, the crew plans to observe Earth’s polar regions through the Dragon Dome at an altitude of 425 to 450 kilometers, using the insights of space physicists and citizen scientists to study unusual light emissions resembling the aurora,” SpaceX wrote in a mission description. “The crew will study green slivers and purple bands of persistent emissions similar to a phenomenon known as STEVE (Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement), which have been measured at an altitude of about 400-500 kilometers above Earth’s atmosphere,” the company added.

The Fram2 crew will also study how spaceflight affects the human body; that work includes taking the first X-ray image of a human in space, according to SpaceX. Fram2 will be SpaceX’s sixth private astronaut mission. Previous missions include Inspiration4, a free flight that launched in September 2021; Ax-1, Ax-2 and Ax-3, flights operated by Houston’s Axiom Space that sent people to and from the International Space Station in April 2022, May 2023 and January to February of this year, respectively; and Polaris Dawn, another free flyer currently scheduled to launch on Aug. 26.

Polaris Dawn is the first of three planned missions in the private Polaris program. All three companies are funded and led by billionaire tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, who did the same for Inspiration4. SpaceX has also launched nine astronaut missions to the International Space Station for NASA, starting with the Demo-2 test flight to the space lab in 2020.

source: Space.com website