A few hours ago, the SpaceX Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft blasted off atop a Falcon 9 rocket from the Kennedy Space Center on the Fram2 mission. After about twelve minutes, it successfully separated from the rocket’s last stage. It will spend between 3 and 5 days in orbit. Unlike the previous private space missions conducted by SpaceX in recent years, in the Fram2, the Crew Dragon entered a polar orbit, the first time for a crewed space flight, at an altitude that will range between 425 and 450 kilometers.
The four crew members of the Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft, all on their first mission, are:
Chun Wang. Born in China, he has lived in various countries throughout his life, and in 2023, he became a citizen of Malta and Saint Kitts and Nevis. He’s an entrepreneur who works in the cryptocurrency field. He’s the commander of the Fram2 mission.
Jannicke Jane Mikkelsen. Born on June 8, 1986, in Edinburgh, Scotland, but also a citizen of Norway, she’s a film director who has been experimenting with virtual reality, augmented reality, and 3D animation for years. In the Fram2 mission, she’s the spacecraft commander. She brought along some cameras to shoot footage of the mission.
Rabea Rogge. Born in Berlin, she earned a master’s degree in electrical engineering from ETH Zurich. She’s studying for a Ph.D. at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
Eric Philips. Born on April 30, 1962, in Melbourne, Australia, he’s an explorer who led various expeditions in different areas of the world, including some in the polar regions.
The Fram2 mission owes its name to the Fram ship used for polar exploration. For the occasion, the Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft has a cupola instead of the hatch used for docking on missions to the International Space Station.
These private missions have various purposes but there are always scientific experiments to be conducted, even when the mission is short and doesn’t stop at the International Space Station. Monitoring the physiological reactions of astronauts is a common element in all space missions, and this is important in the Fram2 mission also because it’s the first time that humans are flying in a polar orbit.
Even after the start of the Fram2 mission, SpaceX continued to declare an undefined length between 3 and 5 days. Consequently, we will have to wait for precise information to know when the Resilience spacecraft will return to Earth, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean off the coast of California.
