First German astronaut in space: Rabea Rogge
The privately financed Fram2 space flight has taken off. Four people are on board, including the German scientist Rabea Rogge.
For Fram2, the Crew Dragon's androck ring has been replaced by a large glass eye, shown here in the SpaceX TV studio.
(Image: SpaceX/Screenshot)
Rabea Rogge is Germany's first female astronaut. On the night of April 1, she was launched from Cape Canaveral in Florida on board the Crew Dragon space capsule. The commander of the mission, called Fram2, is financier Chun Wang, who has become rich through speculation with cryptocurrencies. The flight is scheduled to last 86 hours and 38 minutes, i.e., less than four days.
The crew also includes Norwegian filmmaker Jannicke Mikkelsen, who is the capsule commander, and Australian scientist Eric Philips as medical officer. Philips is a polar researcher, while Rogge, the scientific director of the space flight, is researching Arctic water drones and has also worked on nanosatellites.
First humans in low polar orbit
The concentrated expertise for the polar regions is no coincidence: the spacecraft will orbit the Earth at an altitude of around 430 kilometers in a polar orbit. It will be the first time that humans have flown over the polar regions in a low earth orbit (LEO). For the rocket company SpaceX, it will be the sixth use of the same first stage of a Falcon 9 rocket and the sixth privately financed manned space flight in total.
It won't be relaxing: “We have over 20 scientific experiments that we will be carrying out,” Rogge said in an interview, “We have the amateur radio competition and a project in which we answer questions from schoolchildren. Another big challenge will be to work together efficiently as a crew in a confined space.”
Many of the experiments have to do with improving human health and performance in space, for example with exercises to maintain muscles and bones. The program also includes growing mushrooms in near weightlessness. Finally, an atmospheric optical phenomenon called Strong Thermal Emission Velocity Enhancement (STEVE) is to be investigated. This is a luminous band of hot plasma that occurs at an altitude of 400 to 500 kilometers above the earth.
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