CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – A groundbreaking mission commenced Monday night as a bitcoin investor and three polar experts embarked on a SpaceX journey, pioneering a rocket trajectory over both the North and South Poles.
Chinese-born entrepreneur Chun Wang soared into orbit from NASA's Kennedy Space Center aboard a SpaceX Falcon rocket. The spacecraft veered south over the Atlantic, charting a course previously unexplored in over six decades of human space travel.
Wang has not disclosed the cost of this unique 3 ½-day polar expedition with Elon Musk's SpaceX.
The initial phase, spanning from Florida to the South Pole, was estimated to take approximately thirty minutes. Orbiting at an altitude of roughly 270 miles (430 kilometers), their fully autonomous capsule is set to circle the planet in approximately 90 minutes, including 46 minutes traversing from pole to pole.
Having already explored the polar regions on land, Wang seeks to experience them from space. He emphasized that the voyage is about "pushing boundaries, sharing knowledge."
As a Maltese citizen, Wang is accompanied by Norwegian filmmaker Jannicke Mikkelsen, German robotics researcher Rabea Rogge, and Australian polar guide Eric Philips.
Mikkelsen, the first Norwegian in space, has previously flown over the poles at lower altitudes. She participated in the record-breaking 2019 mission that circumnavigated the globe via the poles in a Gulfstream jet, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the moon landing by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin.
The crew has planned around two dozen experiments, including capturing the first human X-rays in space, and has brought an array of cameras to chronicle their journey, dubbed Fram2 after the historic Norwegian polar research vessel.
To date, no space traveler has ventured beyond 65 degrees north and south latitude, just short of the Arctic and Antarctic Circles. Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space from the Soviet Union, set this record in 1963. Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, and other pioneering cosmonauts, as well as NASA shuttle astronauts in 1990, came close.
A polar orbit is advantageous for climate and Earth observation satellites, as well as surveillance satellites, enabling comprehensive global coverage daily as the spacecraft orbits from pole to pole while Earth rotates.
Geir Klover, director of the Fram Museum in Oslo, Norway, where the original polar ship is exhibited, hopes the mission will raise awareness about climate change and the melting polar ice caps. He provided the crew with a fragment of the ship's wooden deck, bearing the signature of Oscar Wisting, who, alongside Roald Amundsen in the early 1900s, was the first to reach both poles.
Wang proposed the polar flight concept to SpaceX in 2023, following U.S. tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman's initial chartered mission with Musk's company two years prior. Isaacman is now a contender for the NASA administrator position.
SpaceX’s Kiko Dontchev remarked recently that the company continuously improves its training to enable "normal people" without traditional aerospace experience to "hop in a capsule… and be calm about it.”
Wang and his team view the polar journey as a unique form of camping, embracing the challenges.
"Spaceflight is becoming increasingly routine, and I'm honestly happy to see that," Wang shared on X last week.
Wang has been tracking his flights since his first in 2002, including planes, helicopters, and hot air balloons, in his pursuit to visit every country. He has visited over half of them and timed the liftoff to coincide with his 1,000th flight.