Elon Musk's company sends astronauts on a flight over the Earth's poles for the first time in history (3 photos)

The Fram2 mission will be the first manned space flight to explore the polar regions of our planet.





SpaceX, owned and led by Elon Musk, will send a historic mission called Fram2 into space later this year. For the first time, four astronauts will fly aboard a spacecraft above the Earth's poles. The mission will also be the first time that X-rays of a human in space have been taken.

Astronauts have been flying into space for over 60 years, and it would seem that this new mission is nothing special. But in reality, all manned missions have been limited to flying over the Earth's mid-latitudes. Now, SpaceX has announced that it will send four astronauts, who are not professional space explorers but adventurers and space tourists, on a flight over the poles of our planet.



No astronaut has done this before because there was no reason to send them into polar orbit. Such flights are more difficult, and that is why only different satellites orbit in polar orbits. So the Fram2 mission should make history if all goes according to plan.

Later this year, the Falcon 9 launch vehicle will send the crew into orbit aboard the Crew Dragon spacecraft. After entering orbit, the ship will circle the Earth for three to five days at an altitude of 425-450 km above the Earth's surface. During the flight, the astronauts will study the polar regions of the Earth, observe the aurora borealis, also study the effects of space on the human body and, for the first time in history, take X-ray images of a person in space. The astronauts will also study a phenomenon in the Earth's atmosphere that is similar to the aurora borealis, but is a long strip of light known as a stive.



The crew of the Fram2 mission includes: Chun Wang (Malta), Jannike Mikkelsen (Norway), Eric Philips (Australia) and Rabea Rogge (Germany). All four non-professional astronauts have never been to space before.

The Fram2 mission was named after the Norwegian ship Fram, on which Fridtjof Nansen, Otto Sverdrup and Roald Amundsen explored the Arctic and Antarctic from 1893 to 1912. The Fram2 mission will be the sixth crewed private mission for SpaceX.