Elon Musk’s SpaceX has sent a crew of four private astronauts on the first manned space flight to orbit the Earth’s poles, in a mission bankrolled and led by a wealthy crypto investor.
Chun Wang, the Chinese-born Maltese entrepreneur who founded the Bitcoin (BTC) mining pool F2Pool, paid for and is leading SpaceX’s “Fram2” mission, which is named after a 19th-century Norwegian Arctic exploration ship.
Wang and three others blasted off from Cape Canaveral, Florida, at 1:46 am UTC on April 1, on a three- to five-day orbit that will be the first human space mission to fly over the North and South poles.
Liftoff of Fram2 and the @framonauts! pic.twitter.com/XBL5juCnHQ
— SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 1, 2025
Wang hasn’t disclosed how much he paid SpaceX for the flight, but he brought along German polar scientist Rabea Rogge, Norwegian cinematographer Jannicke Mikkelsen and Australian Arctic adventurer