FULL SPLASHDOWN RECOVERY: Fram2 SpaceX astronauts return re-entry from polar orbit

LIVE NOW: Fram2 SpaceX astronauts return from polar orbits

From wikipedia: Fram2 is an ongoing private human spaceflight mission that is being operated by SpaceX with a Crew Dragon spacecraft on behalf of entrepreneur Chun Wang. During the mission, Wang and his all-civilian crew — Jannicke Mikkelsen, Rabea Rogge and Eric Philips — were launched into a polar orbit, a first for a human spaceflight mission. During the three to five-day mission, the crew will conduct scientific research.

The mission is intended to study the Earth's poles and their space environment. It will be a free-flight mission of the Crew Dragon spacecraft, which will be equipped with the panoramic cupola attachment that first flew on Inspiration4.

Initially, Crew Dragon Endurance was selected for this flight, because it shares its name with Ernest Shackleton's Antarctic exploration vessel. Due to changes in the Crew Dragon manifest, however, Endurance was assigned to Crew-10, and it was decided to fly Fram2 using Resilience. The mission launched from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center on 1 April 2025 at 01:46:50 UTC (31 March, 9:46:50 pm EDT, local time at the launch site).[1]

The mission is named Fram2 in reference and succession to the Norwegian polar exploration ship Fram, the first to complete expeditions to both the North Pole and South Pole between 1893 and 1912. The crew carried a piece of the ship's teak deck to space.[9]

The mission entered a low Earth orbit with an apogee of 413 kilometers (257 mi) and a perigee of 202 kilometers (126 mi) with a polar retrograde inclination of 90.01°, making it fly over both of Earth's poles.[10]

Because of the unique launch to the South, the software on the Dragon spacecraft was updated with new abort scenarios that would propel the capsule away from populated areas in Florida, Cuba, Panama and Peru to make a water landing.[11]

It will aim to observe and study aurora-like phenomena such as STEVE and green fragments and conduct experiments on the human body, including the first X-ray of a human in space.[3] The crew will also attempt to grow oyster mushrooms, the first mushrooms to be grown in space.[11] Rogge plans a series of slow-scan television image transmissions over amateur radio targeted to educational groups competing in an event called Fram2Ham.[12]

Dr. Christopher Combs, the associate dean of research at the Klesse College of Engineering and Integrated Design at the University of Texas at San Antonio, described the mission as, "a notch above a gimmick, but not exactly a groundbreaking milestone", with the planned experiments described as offering limited scientific value and able to be conducted regardless of the flight path. However, for the crew members, each with ties to polar exploration, the mission holds personal significance.[11]

The mission is set to conclude with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, the first for a Crew Dragon mission. While SpaceX Dragon 1 cargo missions previously landed in the Pacific, recovery operations shifted to the Eastern U.S. in 2019 to expedite the return of astronauts and critical cargo to Kennedy Space Center. However, this adjustment had an unintended consequence: the trunk module, jettisoned before reentry, was expected to burn up in the atmosphere, yet at least four instances of trunk debris being found on land were reported. Returning to Pacific Ocean splashdowns allows the trunk to remain attached longer and be directed toward a remote area of the ocean called Point Nemo (nicknamed the spacecraft cemetery), where any debris that survives reentry will be unlikely to cause damage.[13][14]

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