Fram2 — first humans over the poles

On 31 March 2025, SpaceX launched the private Fram2 mission aboard a Falcon 9 from Kennedy Space Center, placing a Crew Dragon into a roughly 90-degree polar orbit. Upon orbital insertion, the four-person crew became the first humans ever to fly directly over both of Earth's poles — a trajectory no crewed mission had attempted in more than 600 orbital human spaceflights.

From the Dragon's domed Cupola window, the crew captured the first human views of the polar regions from orbit, crossing pole to pole roughly every 46 minutes. The privately funded mission was commanded by Chun Wang and included crew from Norway, Germany and Australia.

Fram2 underscored how routine and flexible commercial human spaceflight has become: a fully private crew, a novel orbit, onboard science, and a safe splashdown — a flight profile that only national space agencies could have run a few years earlier.