In a first, SpaceX places a crewed mission in polar orbit around Earth.
Fram2 launch
Fram2 launch
A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lit up the skies over the Florida Space Coast Monday night, with the last mission of March 2025. Aboard were four crew members with a unique goal: to reach a polar orbit around the Earth.
The liftoff occurred at 9:46 p.m. Eastern Time (EDT)/13:46 Universal Time (UT) from launch pad LC-39A at the Kennedy Space Center. The B1085 stage 1 Falcon 9 booster completed its sixth deployment, landing on the A Shortfall of Gravitas sea platform minutes after launch. Crew Dragon Resilience reached a near-pinpoint 90.01 degree, very slightly retrograde inclination orbit shortly after liftoff, flying nearly due south from the KSC. This marks Resilience’s fourth trip to space.
The mission is expected to last three to five days, with a splashdown return on Friday, April 4th (exact time to be confirmed) off of the California Pacific Coast.
The mission and crew are all private astronauts, and include Mission Commander Chun Wang (a Chinese-born, Maltese entrepreneur), Vehicle Commander Jannicke Mikkelsen (Norway), Mission Pilot Rabea Rogge (Germany) and Medical Officer and Mission Specialist Eric Phillips (Australia). Each is a seasoned polar explorer, and brings their own unique specialty to the mission objective of exploring the polar regions of our planet from low Earth orbit.
Crew
The Fram2 crew ahead of launch.
SpaceX
"With the same pioneering spirit as early polar explorers, we aim to bring back new data and knowledge to advance the long-term goals of space exploration," says Chun Wang (Mission Commander) in a recent press release "Much like Fridtjof Nansen (the leader of the original Fram polar expedition), the science and research projects onboard will inform how we prepare for future missions, ultimately helping make space more accessible to us all."
This is SpaceX’s first all-private astronaut mission, composed of first-time space travelers. This comes after the Inspiration 4 and Polaris Dawn missions in 2021 and 2024, which featured a combination of NASA astronauts and private crew. ‘Fram’ means ‘forward’ in Norwegian, and the mission takes its name after the legendary Fram polar exploration ship from the 19th century. Fram2 even has a fragment the original ship on board.
The mission is the first crewed spaceflight launch to attain a true polar orbit. The previous record holders occurred during the Soviet Union’s early Vostok missions. The 1990 STS-36 Space Shuttle Atlantis mission reached an orbital inclination of 62 degrees. The reason missions tend to avoid the poles are twofold: one, it takes much more energy to reach a high inclination orbit, versus simply launching eastward and having the rotational velocity of the Earth help push. Two, higher inclination flights are also subjected to higher radiation levels. The same situation versus increased radiation levels also occurs on long trans-continental flights over polar regions.
Crew Dragon
Crew Dragon
This situation also mimics what astronauts on deep space missions would experience. To this end, Fram2 has 22 science and research experiments onboard. These will mostly address issues involving biology and human spaceflight physiological issues. Cinematographer Jannicke Mikkelsen is also documenting the flights over the poles, and the spacecraft itself has a forward cupola view port installed in place of the usual nose cone and docking hatch combination Crew Dragon uses for arrival at the International Space Station.
Observing auroral activity, to include the STEVE (Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement) phenomenon is also a stated objective for the mission. They should get a good show: not only have we just crossed over aurora equinox season where activity is enhanced due to the Russell-Mcpherron Effect, but the massive, X-class flare producing sunspot group active region AR4048 is just now rotating Earthward this week.
STEVE
A timelapse of STEVE, as seen from near Carstairs in Alberta, Canada in 2016.
Neil Zeller (used with permission)
Space-Track now has Fram2 listed as IDs 2025-066A/63427, and Heavens-Above has a link dedicated to tracking the mission on their front page. Spotting Fram2 in orbit will favor regions above 45 degrees latitude northward. Think the northern U.S., Canada, Alaska, Scandinavia etc.
Orbitron
The orbit of Fram2.
Dave Dickinson/Orbitron
All of this highlights a fast-paced year for SpaceX in 2025. The company has already completed 37 launches thus far this year. And while most of those were Starlink deployments, the company also sent Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost lander to the Moon, and the PUNCH and SPHEREx astronomy missions into orbit.
It’ll be fun to follow the crew of Fram2 this week, on a whirlwind pole-to-pole trek in space.