Elon Musk’s SpaceX will send a four-person crew on a polar orbit mission, funded by the founder of the Bitcoin mining pool F2Pool, Chun Wang.
A crew of four is preparing for an unusual journey into space, one that no human has attempted before: flying directly over the Earth’s North and South Poles. The mission, carried out by Elon Musk‘s SpaceX and called Fram2, is being financed by Chun Wang, a Malta-based cryptocurrency investor who built his fortune in Bitcoin (BTC) mining.
The team, launching aboard a SpaceX capsule, includes three adventurers Wang met through polar expeditions: Norwegian filmmaker Jannicke Mikkelsen, German robotics researcher Rabea Rogge, and Australian explorer Eric Philips. None of them have been to space before.
Set to lift off from Florida late Monday night at 9:46 p.m. ET, the mission will take the crew on a path no human spaceflight has traveled. While some satellites use polar orbits for Earth observation, human missions have generally followed paths closer to the equator. Fram2 will aim for a true 90-degree inclination, meaning it will fly directly over both poles.
At one point, F2Pool grew to be one of the largest mining pools in the Bitcoin network, contributing a significant portion of the network’s hash rate.
But as the Bitcoin mining space became more competitive with the rise of American and Russian miners, F2Pool’s role has become smaller. Today, it accounts for just over 10% of Bitcoin’s total hash rate, according to data from Hashrate Index.
Mined over 7,000 BTC
It’s unclear how much Chun paid for the multi-day flight. In a 2022 interview for Staking Rewards, Chun said that during the first two years of F2Pool’s existence, he “personally mined 7,700 Bitcoin,” valued as of press time at around $640 million, though Chun admitted that he sold all of his BTC mined in early days.
“I sold all the Bitcoin from 2011 and 2012 in January 2013 and paid back my initial loan. I borrowed some money from my parents to build the first GPU configuration. I think the price I sold at was like $11.”
Chun Wang
The space mission offers multiple opportunities for research. For instance, the crew will participate in studies on the effects of space travel on the human body, including brain fluid shifts and sleep disruptions. They will undergo MRI scans similar to those conducted on SpaceX’s 2024 Polaris Dawn mission.
Space adaptation syndrome, a severe form of motion sickness, will also be studied. More than 60% of astronauts experience nausea in microgravity. Astronauts experiencing severe symptoms may use anti-nausea injections, but these can cause grogginess. The Fram2 team hopes to contribute to developing better treatments.
Gender gap in space
On top of that, the mission will also include an experiment by British startup Hormona, which aims to track hormone fluctuations in female astronauts. Mikkelsen and Rogge will use urine test strips during the flight.
Jasmine Tagesson, Hormona’s co-founder, told CNN in an interview that the flight could potentially help close “a gender data gap in medicine” as only about 15% of the more than 700 people who have traveled to space have been women. Dr. Jerilynn Prior, a professor of medicine at the University of British Columbia, noted that stressors in space could disrupt ovulation. “At the very least, the stress involved would likely shorten the luteal phase,” she said.
Aside from medical studies, Fram2 will conduct a range of experiments, including growing mushrooms in space, testing exercise routines in microgravity, and observing polar auroras from orbit.
Additionally, the crew will attempt to document Steve, a mysterious auroral phenomenon identified in 2016. “Taking photographs of aurora from space hasn’t been done extensively,” noted Dr. Eric Donovan, an expert in space physics at the University of Calgary.
The crew is expected to spend three to five days in orbit before returning to Earth with a splashdown in the Pacific Ocean.
