Fram2 facts for kids

Quick facts for kids
Fram2

Artist's rendering of Crew Dragon C207 Resilience during Fram2
Mission type	Private spaceflight
Operator	SpaceX
Mission duration	17 days, 18 hours and 37 minutes (in progress) 3–5 days (planned)
Spacecraft properties
Spacecraft	Crew Dragon C207 Resilience
Spacecraft type	Crew Dragon
Manufacturer	SpaceX
Crew
Crew size	4
Members	Chun Wang Jannicke Mikkelsen Rabea Rogge Eric Philips
Start of mission
Launch date	1 April 2025, 01:46:50 UTC (31 March, 9:46:50 pm EDT)
Rocket	Falcon 9 Block 5 (B1085.6), Flight 454
Launch site	Kennedy, LC‑39A
End of mission
Recovered by	MV Shannon
Landing site	Pacific Ocean near Los Angeles, Oceanside, or San Diego
Orbital parameters
Reference system	Geocentric orbit
Regime	Polar orbit (retrograde)
Perigee	202 km (126 mi)
Apogee	413 km (257 mi)
Inclination	90.01°
Period	93 minutes, 10 seconds
Mission insignia Crew Dragon flights ← SpaceX Crew-10 Ax-4 →

Fram2 is an ongoing private human spaceflight mission that is being operated by SpaceX with a Crew Dragon spacecraft on behalf of entrepreneur Chun Wang. During the mission, Wang and his all-civilian crew — Jannicke Mikkelsen, Rabea Rogge and Eric Philips — were launched into a polar orbit, a first for a human spaceflight mission. During the three to five-day mission, the crew will conduct scientific research.

Crew

The crew of Fram2 was announced in August 2024.

Position	Crew
Mission commander	/  Chun Wang First spaceflight
Vehicle commander	/  Jannicke Mikkelsen First spaceflight
Pilot	Rabea Rogge First spaceflight
Mission specialist Medical officer	Eric Philips First spaceflight

Mission

The mission is intended to study the Earth's poles and their space environment. It will be a free-flight mission of the Crew Dragon spacecraft, which will be equipped with the panoramic cupola attachment that first flew on Inspiration4. Initially, Crew Dragon Endurance was selected for this flight, because it shares its name with Ernest Shackleton's Antarctic exploration vessel. Due to changes in the Crew Dragon manifest, however, Endurance was assigned to Crew-10, and it was decided to fly Fram2 using Resilience. The mission launched from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center on 1 April 2025 at 01:46:50 UTC (31 March, 9:46:50 pm EDT, local time at the launch site).

The mission is named Fram2 in reference and succession to the Norwegian polar exploration ship Fram, the first to complete expeditions to both the North Pole and South Pole between 1893 and 1912. The crew carried a piece of the ship's teak deck to space.

The mission entered a low Earth orbit with an apogee of 413 kilometers (257 mi) and a perigee of 202 kilometers (126 mi) with a polar retrograde inclination of 90.01°, making it fly over both of Earth's poles.

Because of the unique launch to the South, the software on the Dragon spacecraft was updated with new abort scenarios that would propel the capsule away from populated areas in Florida, Cuba, Panama and Peru to make a water landing.

It will aim to observe and study aurora-like phenomena such as STEVE and green fragments and conduct experiments on the human body, including the first X-ray of a human in space. The crew will also attempt to grow oyster mushrooms, the first mushrooms to be grown in space. Rogge plans a series of slow-scan television image transmissions over amateur radio targeted to educational groups competing in an event called Fram2Ham.

Dr. Christopher Combs, the associate dean of research at the Klesse College of Engineering and Integrated Design at the University of Texas at San Antonio, described the mission as, "a notch above a gimmick, but not exactly a groundbreaking milestone", with the planned experiments described as offering limited scientific value and able to be conducted regardless of the flight path. However, for the crew members, each with ties to polar exploration, the mission holds personal significance.

The mission is set to conclude with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, the first for a Crew Dragon mission. While SpaceX Dragon 1 cargo missions previously landed in the Pacific, recovery operations shifted to the Eastern U.S. in 2019 to expedite the return of astronauts and critical cargo to Kennedy Space Center. However, this adjustment had an unintended consequence: the trunk module, jettisoned before reentry, was expected to burn up in the atmosphere, yet at least four instances of trunk debris being found on land were reported. Returning to Pacific Ocean splashdowns allows the trunk to remain attached longer and be directed toward a remote area of the ocean called Point Nemo (nicknamed the spacecraft cemetery), where any debris that survives reentry will be unlikely to cause damage.

See also

In Spanish: Fram2 para niños