THE Spacex is ending the latest chapter of his missions commercial manned space flights with the return of mission FRAM2 . The trip took four passengers to a single orbit around the earth, allowing humans fly over the north and southern poles for the first time .
Led by the cryptocurrency billionaire Chun Wang, who funded the mission, the FRAM2 crew has been in free orbit since last Monday (31).
The group landed at the sea at 1:19 pm GMT on the coast of California – the first landing on the west coast of the United States in five years of Spacex’s crew missions. The company broadcast live the eagerness and recovery of the capsule on its site.
During the journey, members of the FRAM2 crew conducted several scientific experiments, including the capture of aurora images from space and the record of their experiences with space sickness.
This discomfort proved to be a significant problem for the crew, according to Wang posts on social networks. He made a fortune with Bitcoin mining operations and is an eager traveler on Earth.
“The first hours of microgravity were not exactly comfortable,” Wang said in an X post, the social network owned by Spacex CEO Elon Musk. “Space nausea hit us – we felt nauseated and ended up throwing up a few times. It was different from sickness in the car or in the sea. You could read on the iPad without worsening the situation, but even a small sip of water could destabilize your stomach and cause vomiting.”
Fortunately, Wang added, “On the second morning, I felt completely renewed.”
The crew shared images and videos captured from a tabless window – called dome – on the tip of the Crew Dragon capsule, which is 4 meters in diameter and gout format.
Wang said she was surprised to see that Antarctica seemed “only pure white” and “no human activity was visible” of her position in the spacecraft.
Timelapse from Antarctica to the Arctic. pic.twitter.com/b3qznpbzb
– Chun (@satofishi) April 3, 2025
Accompanying Wang on the mission were Norwegian film director Jannicke Mikkelsen, German -based robotics researcher Rabea Rogge and Australian adventurer Eric Philips. All four FRAM2 crew members have ties with polar exploration.
“Fram2 is an unconventional mission,” Mikkelsen said in a X -conversation on March 28. “We are not typical NASA astronauts … We left nothing to be certified as astronauts to fly.”
A few first times
This trip was privately financed, allowing Spacex customers to use their time in space as they wanted. In the case of FRAM2, the crew traveled prepared to conduct 22 scientific and research experiments, some of which were designed and supervised by Spacex itself. Most studies were focused on the health of the crew.
For example, in the return to Earth, it was planned for the crew to perform an “exit experiment”.
This experiment would test the ability of passengers to leave the spacecraft on their own after returning to Earth. Normally, astronauts receive team assistance on ground. However, most missions take astronauts to the International Space Station, where they live in microgravity for months and need to read the terrestrial gravity.
“What we hope to see is the crew, one by one, leaving their seats alone, removing the supports to the feet, lowering to take their survival equipment, which weigh about 15 kg,” explained Marissa Rosenberg, senior medical research engineer at Spacex, during live broadcast of Fram2.
The exit experiment was just one of the “first” of this mission. Another highlight was the landing place: no manned Spacex mission had returned from space and amerysted on the coast of California. Until then, all manned missions had landed near Florida.
The company said it would move recovery operations to the west coast for safety reasons. When reentry in the atmosphere, the Dragon capsule needs to discard a cylindrical annex called trunk. Returning through the Pacific ensures that this piece falls into the ocean instead of the earth.
What did the FRAM2 crew do in space?
Satellites are often thrown into polar orbits around the earth. Thus, although the view of FRAM2 was already captured by satellites, it was the first time humans experienced this perspective directly.
No manned mission had directly overwhelmed the terrestrial poles from the orbit of the earth. The planet’s cold poles are invisible to astronauts aboard the International Space Station, for example, which orbits near the Ecuador line.
Before the Fram2, the 1963 Soviet Mission Vostok 6 – which took Valentina Tereshkova, the first woman in space – came closer to a polar orbit, reaching a 65 -degree slope. Fram2, however, sought a 90 -degree slope, traveling perpendicular to Ecuador.
From the orbit, the crew could see Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago near the North Pole, where FRAM2 participants met. Wang highlighted the importance of this unique view.
“I always say that FRAM2 is a mission of Svalbard. We, @framonauts, met in Svalbard and love the ice,” Wang wrote in a post on Thursday night. “The mission was planned when I lived there, and we fly polarly because, in an ISS orbit, we couldn’t see where we live. From that perspective, the mission perfectly achieved its goal.”
Placing the crew of FRAM2 in polar orbit may have more to do with the creation of a distinctive mission than with the execution of ideal scientific research, said Dr. Christopher Combs, Vice-Rector of Research at the Klesse College of Engineering and Integrated Design at the University of Texas in San Antonio.
“This is a private mission. You need something to say it’s different and exciting,” Combs commented.
Regardless of orbital trajectory, crew has contributed to research that can expand knowledge about how humans can live and work in long -term spaces – something essential for future travel to Mars.
Experiments included Mikkelsen and Rogge using urine test strips to measure hormone levels, seeking unpublished data on how women are affected by space flight. Both used the Ring Oura, which monitored sleep quality within the zero gravity capsule. The crew also tried to cultivate mushrooms in space and allowed their brains to be mapped to scientific studies.
Dr. Eric Donovan, auroras specialist at the Department of Physics and Astronomy of the University of Calgary, said he was excited to get new images of the space -viewed polar lights.
Donovan is one of the main experts in a luminous phenomenon called Steve, which only recently began to be studied and sometimes appears in northern latitudes during the auroras.
The photograph of Auroras and other polar light phenomena has not been widely done from space, as astronauts at the International Space Station can usually only try to capture such images in their free time, Donovan explained.
“This is one of the possible advantages of self -finished space flights: as they are privately funded, participants can choose what to do,” Concredo Donovan.
See the moment of landing
Splashdown of Dragon and the @framonauts Confermed – Welcome Back to Earth @satofishi, @astro_jannicke, @rproggeand @Icetrek! pic.twitter.com/nkwzqenf9q
– Spacex (@spacex) April 4, 2025
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This content was originally published in Spacex mission spatial tourists return to Earth; See the moment on the CNN Brazil website.
Source: CNN Brasil
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