KENNEDY SPACE CENTER — As SpaceX launched the four-person crew of the Fram2 mission on Monday night, it was a takeoff for the history books as they will be the first humans to ever orbit Earth’s polar regions from space.

Countdown to launch

Fram2 Cmdr. Chun Wang, Jannicke Mikkelsen, vehicle commander; Rabea Rogge, mission pilot; and Eric Philips, mission specialist and medical officer, were in SpaceX’s Dragon capsule as the company’s Falcon 9 rocket took them to the first-ever polar orbit by humans.

The 4.5-hour launch window opened at 9:46 p.m. ET and it took off from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, confirmed SpaceX.

The Dragon roared through the sky as it broke through the night sky as flashes of lightning were still seen from the passing storm.

It was feared that the earlier storms would have pushed the launch time to 11:20 p.m. ET, which was just one of the backup times made available for this mission. The other times were: 12:53 a.m. ET, and 2:26 a.m. ET, Tuesday.

This was a rare double-launch day for SpaceX as it launched 28 Starlink satellites earlier in the day.

The Fram2 crew rode in the Dragon capsule called Resilience, which has flown three other crewed missions: Crew-1, Inspiration4 and Polaris Dawn.

Jared Isaacman funded and was the commander for the first all-citizen spaceflight Inspiration4 mission and then later, the Polaris Dawn. President Donald Trump has tapped him to be NASA’s next administrator, but Isaacman has not been confirmed yet.

For this all-citizen and private polar launch, it will be the first time that the quartet will be in space, and it will be the first time any human has done a 90-degree circularized orbit, or polar orbit.

This will be a three-to-five-day mission.

Going up into the black to see some white

Helping to launch the Fram2 mission will be SpaceX’s first-stage booster, named B1085.

Not only has it launched a crew missioned, but it also sent up the Blue Ghost mission, the first fully successful lunar mission by a private space company.

• Crew-9 mission
• Starlink 6-77 mission
• Starlink 10-5 mission
• RRT-1
• Blue Ghost and HAKUTO-R

After the stage separation, the first stage of the Falcon 9 rocket landed on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas that was stationed in the Atlantic Ocean.

About the mission

In an exclusive interview with Spectrum News, Wang explained some of the aspects of the mission.

“In addition to bringing the world a new view of the polar regions that are so important to us, we want to share the story and heritage of the Fram ship and show that space is ultimately going to be for all people and nations. We also have a lot of research goals we’ve previewed that we are looking forward to completing,” he described.

The Chinese-born Wang is an entrepreneur and a cryptocurrency investor who funded this mission.

The crew will be conducting different experiments, such as taking aurora photos for the SolarMax project.

And as part of the Blue Marble Project, the four will answer 12 video-recorded questions from students from around the world.

One of the experiments that the crew will be doing is taking x-rays in space for the very first time.

“The other consideration is, is health, and we are taking the first x-rays in space. We know that that the astronauts up on the ISS. They do suffer from bone density loss and from muscle wasting, and that's one of the reasons why they spend a couple of hours every day on the treadmills up there. So, bone injuries could be an issue, certainly for long duration flights. So, we will be taking an x-ray into space, and taking x-rays of our of our hands, chests and pelvis,” said Philips during the team’s teleconference on Friday evening.

Four going up

Wang explained some of the various training that he and his crew took part of to prepare the Fram2 mission.

For Mikkelsen, who lives in Svalbard, a group of Norwegian Islands, she discovered a new phobia while she was doing a team-building exercise in Alaska.

“I don't have many phobias or fears, but we did have a extreme environment training, which was in Alaska, and I live in Svalbard, and it's so far north that we don't actually have any creepy crawlies like spiders and very few mosquitoes and no ants. But, oh man, there were so many bugs when we were doing our survival training in Alaska,” she said during a teleconference on Friday evening. “And we were kayaking and definitely team bonding through that experience, that was probably when I met my biggest phobia, which are spiders. But hey, there should be no spiders in space, as far as I'm informed.”

Mikkelsen was part of the One More Orbit mission in 2019, which was a tribute to the Apollo 11 moon landing. The group flew over the North and South poles for two days in a Qatar Gulfstream G650ER plane.

Speaking of flying, for Wang, who also lives in Svalbard, this mission will be his 1,000th flight.

While the four will be busy with experiments, they will have a bit of fun as Philips said he will be bringing two little pig toys the size of dice. They hold a special meaning for him.

“And we used to take that on our adventures, our hiking and ski adventures and kayaking trips, and we would play this game in the tent or in the cabin. So, I wanted to honor that beautiful family tradition by taking those little pigs into space and trying to work out if there is any way to play this game in space where, of course, we don't have any gravity, to tell us how the pigs land like how dices land,” he shared.

While there are many things that the foursome hopes to see and do, Rogge is looking forward to hosting Fram2Ham, an amateur radio competition.

“I'm also very looking forward to the radio aspect of it, though, because with this, as Eric said, is the first thing that, you know, actually cover all Earth’s regions actually, and we have a fun little radio competition where people had to form international teams all around the globe,” Rogge said, who will also become Germany’s first woman in space.