Image credit: Fram2/SpaceX
The upcoming crewed flight of the Fram2 mission into polar orbit from Florida is a risky undertaking in many ways.
Riding atop a SpaceX Falcon 9 booster, the Fram2 crew — commander Chun Wang, vehicle commander Jannicke Mikkelsen, vehicle pilot Rabea Rogge, and mission specialist and medical officer Eric Philips — face multiple challenges.
Fram2 is the first human spaceflight over the Earth’s polar regions.
Image credit: SpaceX
Unique risks
“It’s an exciting mission with lots of important firsts…but of course also with some unique risks,” said Jan Osburg, a RAND senior engineer in the engineering and applied sciences department and a specialist in space safety.
Osburg told Inside Outer Space that risks include dealing with the radiation environment and the unusual orbit.
Image credit: Fram2
“If anything goes wrong that would preclude the capsule from reentering, they can’t get to an in-orbit safe haven like the International Space Station, both due to their different orbit and due to the airlock for this flight having been replaced with the Dragon Cupola, like during the Inspiration4 mission a few years ago,” Osburg advised.
Robust design
Not having an airlock, Osburg said, also means the crew would have to transfer to a rescue vehicle via space walks, if that rescue vehicle – another Crew Dragon, for example — could be launched in time. “Not sure if they will carry the new SpaceX EVA suits with them just for such a dire contingency, though,” he said.
Image credit: SpaceX
On the other hand, the Crew Dragon seems to be a very robust design, Osburg added, “and the crew, while new to spaceflight, are experienced explorers and should be used to extreme environments and high-risk decision-making.”
Dogleg maneuver
Regarding the radiation environment given the polar flight, Osburg said he assumes the Dragon spacecraft, including its avionics, has been extensively tested for its ability to withstand the higher radiation environment. Additionally, the medical implications should be manageable due to the short exposure time of a few days, he said.
On departure from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, the trajectory to attain a polar orbit likely requires a “dogleg” maneuver during ascent, said Osburg.
SpaceX has done this maneuver a couple of times with un-crewed missions already, Osburg added, to avoid overflying Florida’s Gold Coast. “This costs fuel, but the Falcon 9 can do it,” and even land the booster’s first stage on a droneship afterwards.”
To avoid overflying Florida’s Gold Coast. Image of how that trajectory could look like, based on a previous Falcon 9 flight. This August 30,, 2020 mission marked SpaceX’s first launch to a polar orbit from the East Coast, and the first polar launch from Florida in decades.
Image via Jan Osburg
High inclination
According to a Fram2 press statement, with the exception of the Apollo lunar missions, the Earth’s North and South Poles have not been fully visible to other astronauts in orbit, including those onboard the International Space Station. To date, the highest inclination achieved by human spaceflight has been the Soviet Vostok 6 mission, at 65-degrees, in 1963.
Vostok 6 was piloted by the first woman into Earth orbit, cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova.
The Fram2 mission is named after the original Fram ship that first reached the Earth’s polar regions in the 1800s.
Image credit: Fram2
Research activities
Throughout the nearly four-day mission, among an array of over 20 research activities, the Fram2 crew will capture data about the polar regions.
In collaboration with the University Center of Svalbard, Fram2 will support the SolarMaX Mission to film aurora-like phenomena to create an open-source database of aurora photographs for researchers and citizen scientists.
The crew has also teamed up with Amateur Radio on the International Space Station (ARISS International), to host Fram2Ham, a polar history focused competition for the ham radio community.
One biomedical experiment has been developed by the Falak for Space Science and Research, a nonprofit organization in Saudi Arabia. The study will examine how microgravity affects the eye’s microbiome, specifically investigating bacterial behavior, antibiotic resistance, and biofilm formation.
SpaceX is targeting Monday, March 31, at 9:46 p.m. Eastern Florida Time for Falcon 9’s launch of the Fram2 crew to a polar orbit from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.