A 20th century ship goes into orbit: The story behind SpaceX’s ‘Fram 2’

A Norwegian ship—at least, a part of it—made its way into space on Monday aboard a SpaceX Falcon rocket, along with a crew of private astronauts.

Yes, you read that right! The mission, named Fram 2, aims to orbit Earth from pole to pole, on a path never before taken by humans.

Why Fram 2?


The mission is named after the iconic Norwegian ship “Fram”, renowned for its pivotal role in early 20th-century polar exploration, aiding adventurers in reaching the Arctic and Antarctic. Designed in Norway for polar research, it was the first vessel of its kind.

The ship was the first to complete expeditions to both the North Pole and South Pole, between 1893 and 1912.

To pay tribute, the astronauts took a small fragment of the ship with them into orbit.
The crew and mission

The mission’s crew included Maltese investor Chun Wang and his all-civilian crew: Norwegian film director Jannicke Mikkelsen, Polar scientist Rabea Rogge, and Australian adventurer Eric Philips.

Wang is a Bitcoin investor who purchased a SpaceX flight for himself and the group of polar explorers. However, he hasn’t disclosed how much he paid Elon Musk’s SpaceX for this adventure.

The autonomous Dragon spacecraft will undertake multiple flights from the North Pole to the South Pole over three to five days, orbiting at an altitude of 267 miles and completing each circuit in approximately 46 minutes.

The crew plans to conduct around 24 experiments, including the first-ever human X-rays in space and growing oyster mushrooms in microgravity under the Mission MushVroom project.

So far, no astronaut has travelled beyond the 65 degrees north or south latitude, just before the Arctic and Antarctic circles. That record was set in 1963 by Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space. Yuri Gagarin, the first man in space, and other early cosmonauts from the Soviet Union came close to this limit, as did NASA shuttle astronauts, in 1990.