Bitcoin mining pioneer bankrolls first crewed polar orbit with SpaceX
First crewed polar orbit with SpaceX
In a landmark partnership between private capital and commercial spaceflight, SpaceX is set to launch the first-ever crewed mission to fly over both of Earth’s poles.
The enterprise is being funded by Chun Wang, the cryptocurrency entrepreneur behind Bitcoin mining giant F2Pool, according to Crypto News.
The mission, dubbed Fram2, will lift off Monday night from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center aboard a SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule.
The four-person crew—none of whom are career astronauts—includes Norwegian filmmaker Jannicke Mikkelsen, German robotics researcher Rabea Rogge, and Australian explorer Eric Philips, all of whom previously crossed paths with Wang on polar expeditions.
A new frontier for private space exploration
The Fram2 mission will enter a true polar orbit at 90 degrees inclination, a trajectory typically reserved for satellites. While polar orbits offer unparalleled views of Earth’s surface, they’ve never been used in human spaceflight until now.
Chun Wang, who helped build F2Pool into one of the world’s largest Bitcoin mining operations, personally mined over 7,000 BTC in the early 2010s. Though he sold his holdings for around $11 apiece in 2013, Wang has remained a major figure in the crypto space, now turning his focus toward exploration and science.
The multi-day mission will support research into the effects of space travel on the human body, hormone fluctuations in female astronauts, and space phenomena such as polar auroras and the rare “Steve” aurora.
The crew is expected to orbit Earth for up to five days before splashing down in the Pacific Ocean. With Fram2, private spaceflight ventures continue to blur the lines between scientific ambition, adventure tourism, and the influence of digital wealth on the final frontier.
Meanwhile, BIT Mining announced that diversifying into Dogecoin (DOGE) and Litecoin (LTC) mining has been significantly more profitable than focusing on Bitcoin (BTC) alone. The company revealed that mining DOGE and LTC is nearly three times more profitable than mining BTC.
