CAPE CANAVERAL (AP) – A bitcoin investor who bought a SpaceX flight for himself and three polar explorers blasted off on Monday night on the first rocket ride to carry people over the North and South poles.
Chinese-born entrepreneur Chun Wang hurtled into orbit from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. SpaceX’s Falcon rocket steered southward over the Atlantic, putting the space tourists on a path never flown before in 64 years of human spaceflight.
Wang won’t say how much he paid Elon Musk’s SpaceX for the three-day ultimate polar adventure.
The first leg of their flight – from Florida to the South Pole – took barely a half-hour. From the targeted altitude of some 440 kilometres, their fully automated capsule will circle the globe in roughly one and a half hour including 46 minutes to fly from pole to pole.
“Enjoy the views of the poles. Send us some pictures,” SpaceX Launch Control radioed once the capsule reached orbit.
Wang has already visited the polar regions in person and wants to view them from space.
The trip is also about “pushing boundaries, sharing knowledge,” he said ahead of the flight.
Now a citizen of Malta, he took along three guests: Norwegian filmmaker Mikkelsen, German robotics researcher Rabea Rogge and Australian polar guide Eric Philips.
The First Norwegian bound for space Jannicke Mikkelsen has flown over the poles before, but at a much lower altitude.
She was part of the 2019 record-breaking mission that circumnavigated the world via the poles in a Gulfstream jet to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s moon landing.
A polar orbit is ideal for climate and Earth-mapping satellites as well as spy satellites.
That’s because a spacecraft can observe the entire world each day, circling Earth from pole to pole as it rotates below. Wang pitched the idea of a polar flight to SpaceX in 2023, two years after United States tech entrepreneur Jared Isaacman made the first of two chartered flights with Musk’s company. Isaacman is now in the running for NASA’s top job.
SpaceX’s Kiko Dontchev said late last week that the company is continually refining its training so “normal people” without traditional aerospace backgrounds can “hop in a capsule … and be calm about it.”
Wang and his crew view the polar flight like camping in the wild and embrace the challenge.
“Spaceflight is becoming increasingly routine and, honestly, I’m happy to see that,” Wang said via X last week.
Wang said he’s been counting up his flights since his first one in 2002, flying on planes, helicopters and hot air balloons in his quest to visit every country. So far, he’s visited more than half. He arranged it so that liftoff would mark his 1,000th flight.
