SpaceX flight launches 4 space tourists into first-ever polar orbit

A bitcoin investor who bought a SpaceX flight for himself and three polar explorers blasted off Monday night on the first rocket ride to carry people over the North and South poles.

Chun Wang, a Chinese-born entrepreneur, hurtled into orbit from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. SpaceX’s Falcon rocket steered southward over the Atlantic, putting the space tourists on a path never flown before in 64 years of human spaceflight.

Wang won’t say how much he paid Elon Musk’s SpaceX for the 3 ½-day ultimate polar adventure.

The first leg of their flight—from Florida to the South Pole—took barely a half-hour. From the targeted altitude of some 270 miles (440 kilometers), their fully automated capsule will circle the globe in roughly 1 ½ hours including 46 minutes to fly from pole to pole.

“Enjoy the views of the poles. Send us some pictures,” SpaceX Launch Control radioed once the capsule reached orbit.

Wang has already visited the polar regions in person and wants to view them from space. The trip is also about “pushing boundaries, sharing knowledge,” he said ahead of the flight.

Now a citizen of Malta, he took along three guests: Norwegian filmmaker Jannicke Mikkelsen, German robotics researcher Rabea Rogge, and Australian polar guide Eric Philips.

Mikkelsen, the first Norwegian bound for space, has flown over the poles before, but at a much lower altitude. She was part of the 2019 record-breaking mission that circumnavigated the world via the poles in a Gulfstream jet to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s moon landing.

The crew plans two dozen experiments—including taking the first human X-rays in space—and brought along more cameras than usual to document their journey called Fram2 after the Norwegian polar research ship from more than a century ago.

Until now, no space traveler had ventured beyond 65 degrees north and south latitude, just shy of the Arctic and Antarctic circles. The first woman in space, the Soviet Union’s Valentina Tereshkova, set that mark in 1963. Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, and other pioneering cosmonauts came almost as close, as did NASA shuttle astronauts in 1990.

A polar orbit is ideal for climate and Earth-mapping satellites as well as spy satellites. That’s because a spacecraft can observe the entire world each day, circling Earth from pole to pole as it rotates below.

Geir Klover, director of the Fram Museum in Oslo, Norway, where the original polar ship is on display, hopes the trip will draw more attention to climate change and the melting polar caps. He lent the crew a tiny piece of the ship’s wooden deck that bears the signature of Oscar Wisting, who with Roald Amundsen in the early 1900s became the first to reach both poles.

Wang pitched the idea of a polar flight to SpaceX in 2023, two years after U.S. tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman made the first of two chartered flights with Musk’s company. Isaacman is now in the running for NASA’s top job.

SpaceX’s Kiko Dontchev said late last week that the company is continually refining its training so “normal people” without traditional aerospace backgrounds can “hop in a capsule . . . and be calm about it.”

Wang and his crew view the polar flight like camping in the wild and embrace the challenge.

“Spaceflight is becoming increasingly routine and, honestly, I’m happy to see that,” Wang said via X last week.

Wang said he’s been counting up his flights since his first one in 2002, flying on planes, helicopters, and hot air balloons in his quest to visit every country. So far, he’s visited more than half. He arranged it so that liftoff would mark his 1,000th flight.

The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

—Marcia Dunn, AP Aerospace Writer

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