Falcon 9 missiles bring 4 astronauts to the Kennedy Space Center at 21h46 on March 31 (8h46 on April 1 in Hanoi time).
The Resilience of the Fram2 mission takes off. Video: SpaceX
This private mission is called Fram2, bringing the Crew Dragon spacecraft called Resilience Bay in extreme trajectory. The commander of the Fram2 task is Chun Wang, from Malta. The remaining three members of the crew, including the commander of the Jannicke Mikkelsen from Norway, pilot Rabea Rogge from Germany and medical expert Eric Phillips from Australia.
Only 2.5 minutes after taking off, the first layer of Falcon 9 turned off 9 Merlin engines, separated from the rest of the rocket and performed the fire deceleration process to prepare to land on the Just Read The Instriations of SpaceX in the Atlantic. This missile layer successfully landed about 5.5 minutes later, according to the schedule.
The second floor of Falcon 9 continued to fly into the Earth’s orbit, then drop the resilience ship to fly less than 10 minutes after launching. Now, the crew will spend the next 3-5 days flying around the most remote locations on the planet, observing the poles in the way no one has ever seen.
The astronauts of the Fram2 mission (from left to right): Eric Phillips, Rabea Rogge, Jannicke Mikkelsen and Chun Wang. Image: SpaceX
The Fram2 was named after the Norwegian ship, the ship explored the Arctic and Antarctic region in the early 20th century. Fram in Norway is “moving forward”.
Fram2 will continue the exploring spirit of its predecessor Fram. This spacecraft carrying 22 experiments that the crew will deploy, including mushroom growing experiments in the first space and a machine for the first time X-ray of human body in orbit. Other experiments will investigate how micro gravity affects the musculoskeletal system of people on space flight.
Fram2 is SpaceX’s 17th crew flight and is the 6th flight for private customers. The Resilience ship has made 4 of those flights. The ship participated in Crew-1, the first mission of SpaceX to bring the crew to the International Space Station (ISS) for NASA, as well as Inspiration4 and Polaris Dawn, respectively, the first and recent private crew mission of SpaceX into the Earth’s orbit.
The Fram2 launch was just two weeks and three days after Crew-10, the task of bringing the crew to the ISS station for NASA, taking off. This is the shortest time ever between SpaceX’s crew launch.
Fram2 mission is expected to last 3-5 days and end with a landing to the Pacific – for the first time with a mission with the company’s crew. The ships carrying other people landed off Florida, but SpaceX was shifting to the west coast of the United States to reduce the possibility of debris of ships harmful to people or property on the road to the earth.
A last experiment will take place during the landing, because the crew will not receive medical support and move that astronauts often receive after space flight, when their bodies adapt to gravity.