With the drama around the first human spaceflight of that year, SpaceX is back in the business of sending private customers into space.
The FRAM2 mission, led by a Chinese-born cryptocurrency entrepreneur and three of his friends, is targeting a lift-off from Kennedy Space Center’s launch pad 39-A on Monday, March 31st.
It was the second human space flight after KSC’s NASA crew 10 launches earlier this month, and set up the return of another Crew Dragon with a Crew 9 mission from the International Space Station.
It took home Boeing Starliner astronauts Butchwillmore and Sniwilliams, left behind at the station last year, and became the center of the national spotlight after denounced President Trump and Elon Musk for leaving the Biden administration there for political reasons.
This next flight is the first time a human has flew in polar orbit around the Earth, but this next flight is slowly losing attention.
The FRAM2 crew completed training in California this week, and early this morning, the Dragons supporting their mission arrived at the Florida Pad 39A hangar before the liftoff on Monday, March 31st pic.twitter.com/ydt8ihyqhi
– SpaceX (@Spacex) March 22, 2025
SpaceX posted to X on Saturday. The Dragon’s resilience of the crew is already in the KSC hangar, and the crew of FRAM2 completed training in California last week, aiming for a lift-off at the end of the month.
The first launch window will have a target liftoff at 11:20pm on March 31st, with backups leaking at 12:53am and 2:26am on April 1st
The first stage booster will take the sixth flight to space. This is the same as the one that launched Crew-9 in September last year.
As Crew-10 was released on March 14th, the release of FRAM2 just 17 days later marks a record-breaking tipping point for human spaceflight from the same pad.
The crew is currently led by Chun Wang of Malta. In addition to being able to fund missions, he is an avid adventurer. For the ride, we have fellow Australian adventurer Eric Phillips, Norway’s Giannick Mikkelsen, and Germany’s Laveer Lodge. Mikkelsen will turn the roles of mission commander and Phillips into the role of pilots.
Chun is updating the progress of training for your X account.
“This morning we spent over three hours on a dragon simulator running through Deorbit and Splashdown sequences. This was the final simulation at the Hawthorn Training Center,” he posted Friday.
He said the crew began training in December 2023, with Haley Esparza, the SpaceX astronaut operations manager, who was “at home” at the time.
“I didn’t believe her at the time. Everything felt strange and unfamiliar. But now we’ve finally graduated. This place has really become our home.
SpaceX has been working on the fifth task so far, flying 16 missions and 62 humans in a fleet of four-person Dragon Capsules.
Crew Dragon Resilience made its debut in 2021 to the station for NASA’s Crew 1 mission, but if confirmed, Jared Isaacman, the next head of NASA, switched Inspiration 4 on his first trip to space.
SpaceX pulled a positive docking device from the Crew-1 as Inspiration4 was not heading towards the space station. Instead, they installed cupola windows that allowed Isaacman and his crew to enjoy better views during the three-day orbital flight.
Isaacman and three new crew members have returned to the resilience of last year’s Polaris Dawn Mission, but this time SpaceX will add the Skywalker Spacewalk Platform instead of Cupola, allowing Isaacman to become the first commercial astronaut.
However, for FRAM2, Cupola has returned.
FRAM2 is named after the ship Fulham, built in Norway, which was used in the late 1800s and early 1900s to help explorers such as Roaldo Muundsen arrive in the Arctic and Antarctic.
“Wang aims to use this mission to highlight the exploration spirit of its crew, bring wonder and curiosity to the public, and highlight how technology can push the boundaries of Earth’s exploration and help it through mission research,” SpaceX posted on its website last year when it announced its mission.
FRAM2 lasts for 3-5 days and challenges altitudes of 264-279 miles. “We are using insights from astrophysicists and citizen scientists to study abnormal light emissions similar to those underheard,” SpaceX posted.
The plan is to study the green and mauve heat emissions, conduct other research, and study the effects of spaceflight on the human body, including taking X-ray images of the first human in space.
It also targets the first crew dragon mission that won’t splatter off the Florida coast as SpaceX moves its recovery work to the West Coast. This movement was made to provide better control over where a propulsion module called a trunk that peels off the spacecraft returns to Earth during re-entry. Last week’s Crew 9 splashdown may have been the last time the Crew Dragon will make a return to Florida.
SpaceX has at least two crew dragon missions planned this year, with private enterprise axiom space aimed at lifting off the International Space Station in May on its fourth private mission. A trip to the station with Crew Flight 11 in mid-July will then follow to exchange Crew-10s.
NASA has not announced when a relief flight for Crew 11 will take place, but it could fall on SpaceX as Starliner Boeing certification still faces hurdles that could push it up into 2026.
