The hardware that will fly a historic private astronaut mission has made it to the launch pad.
On Saturday (March 29), SpaceX posted photos on X of the Fram2 mission's Falcon 9 rocket and Crew Dragon capsule rolling out to Launch Complex 39A at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
The milestone keeps Fram2 on track to launch on Monday evening (March 31). Liftoff is scheduled for 9:46 p.m. EDT (0146 GMT on April 1), though there are three additional instantaneous opportunities during the 4.5-hour-long launch window.
Fram2 will send four private astronauts to low Earth orbit, on a trajectory that will take them over both of our planet's poles — something no human spaceflight mission has ever done.
Those four spaceflyers represent four different nations. They are Chun Wang of Malta, the Fram2 commander; vehicle commander Jannicke Mikkelsen of Norway; pilot Rabea Rogge of Germany; and Australia's Eric Phillips, who will serve as medical officer and mission specialist.
Related: Meet the astronauts of SpaceX's Fram2 mission, the 1st to fly over Earth's poles
Fram2 will circle Earth for three to five days, during which time the crew will conduct a total of 22 scientific experiments.
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Some of that work will be groundbreaking. For example, Fram2 will grow mushrooms — a possible food source for future voyaging astronauts — in orbit for the first time and will take the first-ever X-rays of the human body in space.
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Fram2 will be the sixth flight for this particular Falcon 9's first stage, according to a SpaceX mission description.
It will be the fourth mission for the Crew Dragon spacecraft "Resilience." The capsule previously flew Crew-1, SpaceX's first operational mission to the International Space Station for NASA, and the Inspiration4 and Polaris Dawn flights.
Inspiration4 and Polaris Dawn were free-flying missions to Earth orbit funded and commanded by billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, President Trump's nominee to be the next NASA administrator.
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Mike Wall
Senior Space Writer
Michael Wall is a Senior Space Writer withSpace.comand joined the team in 2010.He primarily covers exoplanets, spaceflight and military space, but has been known to dabble in the space art beat.His book about the search for alien life, "Out There," was published on Nov. 13, 2018. Before becoming a science writer, Michael worked as a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph.D. in evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor's degree from the University of Arizona, and a graduate certificate in science writing from the University of California, Santa Cruz. To find out what his latest project is, you can follow Michael on Twitter.
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