Cryptocurrency entrepreneur Chun Wang and a team of three astronauts set off on a historic SpaceX flight Monday to explore the earth’s polar regions from orbit.
What Happened: The SpaceX rocket, bought by Chinese-born Wang, took off on Monday night from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, reported AP News. The Falcon rocket flew across the Atlantic, setting the space tourists on a path never before taken in the 64-year history of human spaceflight.
The fully automated capsule will circle the globe in approximately 1 ½ hours, including a 46-minute flight from pole to pole. The first leg of the flight, from Florida to the South Pole, was expected to take just half an hour. The total cost of the polar adventure remained a mystery, though.
The mission, named Fram2, is named in honor of the ship that helped explorers first reach Earth’s Arctic and Antarctic regions. From mission proposal, planning, trajectory design, and crew selection, everything has been done by Wang and his team.
Wange announced on X, “Today, we become the 681st humans to fly above the Kármán line [the imaginary space boundary] and the 626th to orbit the Earth.”
See Also: Peter Schiff Says Strategic Bitcoin Reserve Is A ‘Scam’ To Lure Americans Into Buying More Crypto
Why It Matters: Notably, Wang co-founded the leading mining pool, F2Pool, in 2013, which allows users to pool their computing power to mine various cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin (CRYPTO: BTC) and Litecoin (CRYPTO: LTC).
The trend of cryptocurrency investors taking an active interest in space expeditions was gaining traction.
Cryptocurrency billionaire Jed McCaleb, who co-founded Ripple Labs (CRYPTO: XRP), is collaborating with Elon Musk’s SpaceX to launch the world’s first privately developed space station.
Image via Shutterstock
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Disclaimer: This content was partially produced with the help of Benzinga Neuro and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors.
