Crypto magnate buys SpaceX mission for private polar spaceflight expedition

Private polar expeditions are reaching a new level: Space.

Cryptocurrency speculator Chun Wang bought a SpaceX multi-day flight for an undisclosed amount, the company announced on Monday, with plans to lead the first crewed space mission in polar orbit, flying end-to-end over the Earth.

Called “Fram2,” an ode to the 19th-century polar expedition ship Fram, the mission is scheduled to launch near the end of this year. It will fly on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket and use its thrice-flown Dragon capsule named Endurance — an apt coincidence, as a NASA crew three years ago named the spacecraft after explorer Sir Ernest Shackleton’s famed ship.

For the mission, Wang invited a trio of Arctic specialists to join him: Jannicke Mikkelsen, 38, a Norwegian filmmaker; Eric Philips, 62, an Australian explorer and guide; and Rabea Rogge, 28, a German researcher.

“I’ve been interested in space from a very young age … and for the first time, a private person can plan and design their own very personal mission,” Wang told CNBC.

Wang, 42, was born in Tianjin, China, but now hails from the Mediterranean island country of Malta, having become a citizen last year. Wang said he met his fellow crewmembers while living in Svalbard, the far north Norwegian archipelago, and describes himself as “nomadic,” having visited more than 100 countries the past few years.

Even as the cost of human spaceflight has come down from the exclusive domain of superpower governments, a multi-day mission is still only accessible to ultra-high-net-worth individuals.

SpaceX does not advertise the price of its crewed missions, even though the company does disclose its price tag for launching satellites. NASA has previously disclosed it pays about $55 million per seat to fly astronauts on Dragon, meaning a crewed mission is upward of $200 million.

Wang confirmed that “I paid for this mission,” but declined to specify how much.

Aside from showing off his trips around the world on social media, Wang has kept a low profile and his unspecified net worth appears mostly, if not fully, tied to work mining cryptocurrency.

On LinkedIn, Wang says he mined 7,700 bitcoin over two years, an amount that would be worth about $450 million at current prices. He also says he was the co-founder of F2Pool, a self-described decentralized collective that helps generate cryptocurrency — and the organization says it’s mined more than 1.3 million in bitcoin in the past 11 years, an amount that would be worth over $76 billion in today’s dollars.

Mikkelsen, who is Wang’s neighbor in the Svalbard town of Longyearbyen, said she was shocked when she went from friend to future astronaut.

“I absolutely did not believe Chun when he just randomly texted me,” Mikkelsen told CNBC.

Wang said his proposal to SpaceX for the Fram2 mission came together after the historic private Inspiration4 flight in 2021.

Like Inspiration4, the spacecraft will have a “cupola” window installed and will spend three to five days in orbit. The Fram2 crew has plans to conduct a variety of research as well, including studying the upper atmosphere — especially looking at “fragments in the aurora” above Earth, Mikkelsen said — as well as analysis of spaceflight effects on the human body.

The crew members started training with SpaceX this week, having done their own “extreme environment” training in Alaska a month ago, and hope their flight furthers the idea that space is becoming more accessible. Mikkelsen said she hopes to do more than “just film a documentary,” but make “an immersive production, so you also can experience it as if you are in Dragon.”

“We are trying to make the door wider and make people feel that everyone can have their own very personal space mission,” Wang added.