KENNEDY SPACE CENTER — SpaceX chalked up another human spaceflight Monday night, taking four civilians on a trip around the Earth that has never been done before.

Now circling the planet on a first-ever polar orbit, the crew of the Fram2 mission had climbed aboard the Crew Dragon Resilience on Monday night launching atop a Falcon 9 rocket from KSC’s Launch Complex 39-A at 9:46 p.m.

The rocket rumbled off the pad with a barrage of thunderstorms lighting up the sky in the distance. KSC had been under lightning and hail warnings as a stormfront with 40 mph winds plowed through the Space Coast even as the crew sat in its spacecraft at the pad awaiting launch.

But launch they did, with the rocket path arcing to the south off Florida’s East Coast creating a unique blue-and-orange plume in the night sky billowing out like a jellyfish. The trajectory took it over Cuba and then off the Pacific Coast of South America.

Footing the bill for the flight is Chinese-born Chun Wang of Malta, an entrepreneur who made a fortune in cryptocurrency and an avid adventurer who has visited both the Arctic and Antarctica, but by land. What he’s paying has not been announced, but a similar private mission run by Axiom Space but contracting with SpaceX for use of its spacecraft cost each of its passengers $55 million.

Wang’s three crewmates are friends and fellow adventurers Eric Philips of Australia, Jannicke Mikkelsen of Norway and Rabea Rogge of Germany. Mikkelsen has the role of mission commander and Philips the role of pilot.

Fram2 is named after the ship Fram, built in Norway, that was used to help explorers such as Roald Amundsen get to the Arctic and Antarctica in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The Fram2 crew brought a small piece of the ship with them on the trip.

“On behalf of the Falcon team, we’re honored to deliver you safely to your polar orbit,” announced a member of the SpaceX launch team after liftoff. “Enjoy the views of the poles. Send us some pictures, and our hearts and our minds will be flying with you as you go over the poles, have a great flight.”

Wang had a succinct response from space on what has mostly been a private leadup to launch.

“Cheers,” he said.

Ahead of launch, Wang had a conversation with crewmate Philips, who said his last trip to the South Pole over land that took 60 days.

“Can you believe that in less than 42 minutes we’ll fly from here in Florida to the South Pole,” he asked?

“Unbelievable,” Philips replied.

First views of Earth’s polar regions from Dragon pic.twitter.com/3taP34zCeN

— SpaceX (@SpaceX) April 1, 2025

As Dragon headed into orbit at a 90-degree inclination, the first-stage booster, which was flying for the sixth time, made a recovery landing on the droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas stationed in the Atlantic.

The crew plans to perform 22 research studies including taking the first X-ray in space, growing mushrooms and testing out blood-flow restriction devices.

The trip is slated to last from three to five days and the Dragon capsule will return for a splashdown off the coast of California, the first time a crewed Dragon hasn’t landed off of Florida. Also for the first time the crew will exit the spacecraft without any assistance as part of an assessment of short-duration spaceflight effects on the human body.

This was the 26th launch from the Space Coast in 2025. The 25th came just over six hours earlier as SpaceX sent up a Starlink mission from neighboring Cape Canaveral Space Force Station on Monday afternoon.

It was a launch Wang and his crewmates saw while being driven up through Merritt Island on the way onto KSC property.

“We’re gonna watch a rocket launch while on our way to a rocket launch,” Wang posted on X.

This was the fourth flight of Crew Dragon Resilience, which first flew on the Crew-1 mission in 2020, followed by the Inspiration4 flight in 2021 and Polaris Dawn in 2024.

Instead of a forward-facing hatch used to dock with the International Space Station, the capsule has a nearly 4-foot-wide cupola window installed to allow for 360-degree views for the crew.

The mission marks the second human spaceflight of the year for SpaceX following the Crew-10 launch earlier in March.

Since the Demo-2 mission in May 2020, the company has now flown 66 people in space on 17 missions aboard its fleet of four Crew Dragons. A fifth Crew Dragon is expected to fly for the first time this year.

Eleven of the 17 missions have been for NASA’s Commercial Crew Program, while the other six have been for private missions. Only Fram2, Polaris Dawn and Inspiration4 have been on trips that didn’t visit the ISS.

SpaceX has at least two more Crew Dragon missions slated this year with a private flight to the space station for Axiom Space targeting May and the Crew-11 flight to the space station in mid-July.