A historic mission is preparing to take flight from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center as soon as Monday night. Four first-time astronauts will launch onboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and head into a polar orbit.
Malta resident Chun Wang is funding the orbital polar expedition and will fly alongside Norwegian cinematographer, Jannicke Mikkelsen; German arctic robotics researcher, Rabea Rogge; and Australian polar guide, Eric Philips.
Liftoff of the mission, dubbed Fram2, is set for 9:46 p.m. EDT (0146 UTC). If needed, there are three backup opportunities over the course of the 4.5-hour launch window, which ends at 2:26 a.m. EDT (0626 UTC) on Tuesday, April 1.
Spaceflight Now will have live coverage beginning about two hours prior to liftoff.
Heading into the launch opportunity, the 45th Weather Squadron forecast a 60 percent chance for favorable weather at the opening of the window, which improves to 75 percent by the end.
Meteorologists wrote that ahead of a storm front heading towards the Space Coast may still present with storms near the opening of the window.
“Additionally, an upper-level cirrostratus cloud deck associated with the approaching front will introduce a Thick Cloud concern, especially in the middle to end of the launch window,” launch weather officers wrote. “Thus, the primary concerns are Cumulus Cloud Rule and Flight Through Precipitation associated with the lingering convection, shifting to more of a Thick Cloud Layers Rule concern for the later T-0s with the overall probability of violation slowly decreasing throughout the window.”
On Friday, Kiko Dontchev, the vice president of Launch for SpaceX, said they were juggling a similar challenge to launch as they experienced with the Polaris Dawn flight last year.
“This mission is a little more challenging than even a normal crew mission when it comes to launch availability,” Dontchev said during a teleconference about the mission on X. “Because this is a free flier and we are not going to the space station, we not only have to worry about weather at the launch site, weather on the ascent track, but we also have to go ahead and predict weather in the recovery zone.”
The Falcon 9 rocket supporting this mission, tail number B1085 in the SpaceX fleet will launch for a sixth time. This will be the second time this booster launches crew to orbit following the flight of Crew-9 to the International Space Station in September 2024.
The Fram2 mission marks the first time that a booster with five previous flights launches launches an astronaut mission.
SpaceX is flying the crew onboard the Crew Dragon Resilience spacecraft. This will be its fourth trip to space, following the launches of Crew-1, Inspiration4 and Polaris Dawn.
One for the history books
The destination of these four astronauts for their 3.5- to 5-day mission takes them on a polar orbit at a 90 degree inclination. While this isn’t the highest inclination for a mission launching from the Space Coast (that would be the ESSA 9 weather satellite in 1969, per astronomer Jonathan McDowell) this will be the highest inclination flown by humans.
“Interestingly, the closest astronauts have ever come to flying in a true polar orbit (90 deg inclination) were the original Soviet Vostok and Voskhod cosmonauts (including Yuri Gagarin) in the early 1960s – and they only flew to around 65 deg,” Jon Edwards, vice president of Falcon and Dragon at SpaceX, wrote on X. “The space shuttle did a single mission to 62 deg in 1990. Now, in the spirit of exploration, Fram2 will take yet another bold step for humankind.”
Mikkelsen, an award-winning cinematographer is responsible for capturing the experience through a variety of cameras throughout the flight. She said it’s marquee moment for human spaceflight.
“My first and immediate thought is: We are leaving planet Earth. We are embarking on an epic expedition to be the first humans in a polar orbit, the last frontier of human exploration in low Earth orbit,” she said. “We are the new generation of astronauts.”
During the mission, the crew will conduct a suite of 22 science experiments and technology demonstrations. Those include experiments monitoring glucose regulation, mushroom growth and the impact of spaceflight on women’s reproductive health.
Learn more about the crew and how they came to this mission by clicking here.
