Chinese-born Maltese Chun Wang, along with three other astronaut apprentices, boarded a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on Tuesday, April 1, for the launch of the long-awaited Fram2 Polaris Dawn mission. The aerospace company managed by Elon Musk is already on its fourth space tourism mission, and "Fram2" will have the particularity of aiming for a polar orbit, spending 3 to 5 days above the Earth's North and South Poles. Never before have astronauts flown in such an orbit.
Other major firsts were granted to the Fram2 mission, including the highly symbolic first space mission without an American, Russian, or Chinese astronaut on board. It was also the first manned flight without a qualified pilot on board.
Norwegian filmmaker Jannicke Mikkelsen, Australian guide Eric Philips, and German robotics researcher Rabea Rogge occupy the three remaining spots offered by SpaceX in the capsule, which Like the Inspiration4 mission, it will be equipped with an observation dome – a veritable window onto Earth from low Earth orbit. After taking off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the Crew Dragon spacecraft reached an orbit with an apogee of 413 km and a perimeter of 202 km.
By taking advantage of a lower altitude, the astronauts will be able to capture spectacular images of the numerous northern and southern lights, while the inclination of their orbit will be 90 degrees, the perfect right angle to the equator. The North Pole and the South Pole will therefore be flown over one after the other, every 45 minutes. A first video was published by Chun Wang on his X account, where For six minutes, it is possible to admire Antarctica, seen from the capsule's cupola.
“Flying to the ISS interests me less”
Chun Wang, who certainly spent between 100 and 200 million dollars to reserve such a mission for SpaceX, explained his choice to aim for a polar orbit by quoting Jared Isaacman, the company's other wealthy client, who flew on Inspiration4 and Polaris Dawn (before becoming the new administrator of NASA).
“Jared deployed "I put a lot of effort into flying as high as possible thanks to his experience as a pilot. In this Fram2 mission, we have a group of polar explorers. We're going to approach things from the explorer's perspective. I don't want to repeat the same mission profile over and over again. I'm less interested in flying to the ISS because all the previous missions have been there and back," he told Ars Technica.
It's worth noting that the Fram2 launch was delayed for some time as SpaceX was forced to revise its plans and administer a new Dragon capsule to bring new astronauts to aboard the ISS, and thus initiate the procedure for returning to Earth the two astronauts left behind by the Boeing Starliner, Suni Williams and Butch Wilmore.
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