Elon Musk‘s rocket manufacturing company SpaceX said on Monday that it will launch the first human spaceflight to fly over Earth’s polar regions as early as 2024.
What Happened: The civilian mission, called “Fram2,” will be the Dragon spacecraft’s sixth commercial astronaut mission. It will explore the Earth from a polar orbit and fly over the Earth’s polar regions for the first time, the company said.
The mission will be commanded by Chun Wang from Malta. Wang will be joined by Jannicke Mikkelsen from Norway, Eric Philips from Australia, and Rabea Rogge from Germany.
“I've been looking forward to this mission for 2.5 years now. From mission proposal, planning, trajectory design, to crew selection, everything has been done by the customer. And now, here we are!” Wang wrote in a post on X, comparing the mission to Apple Inc.’s Steve Jobs’ announcement of the original iPhone in 2007.
Wang also applauded SpaceX for allowing private individuals to undertake space missions.
“Until 2021, space missions were solely the privilege of governments. Private individuals were unable to charter a Space Shuttle like they would do for an airplane. Then Inspiration 4 came along and changed everything,” he wrote, referring to the first all-civilian mission to orbit led by Shift4 Payments CEO Jared Isaacman. The crew flew aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon spacecraft which was launched by a Falcon 9 rocket.
The Fram2 mission, also launched by SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket from Florida, will last 3 to 5 days. The crew will observe Earth’s polar regions at an altitude of 425-450 km during the mission.
“This is cool,” SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said about the mission.
Why It Matters: SpaceX has launched thirteen human spaceflight missions in the past four years. These missions took 50 crewmembers to and from Earth’s orbit.
The Fram2 mission is named in honor of the ship that helped explorers first reach Earth’s Arctic and Antarctic regions. The Fram ship was used by Norwegian explorers between 1893 and 1912 and is now preserved at a museum in Oslo, Norway.
SpaceX completed 67 missions using its Falcon launch vehicles as of the end of the second quarter, with its Falcon 9 workhorse alone accounting for 66 launches. The company is looking to launch 144 times in 2024, averaging twelve times per month.
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