When cryptocurrency investor Chun Wang footed the cost of a SpaceX flight over the North and South Poles, he thought he’d be able to see signs of explorers and research activities below.
But from 260 miles above in space, he saw no trace of humanity — just desolation: a seemingly endless view of pure white ice.
Wang and three other crewmates are the first people to fly over Earth’s poles in space. With him in a small Dragon capsule are Jannicke Mikkelsen, Rabea Rogge, and Eric Philips. The private mission launched from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on a Falcon 9 rocket March 31. It’s the same spaceship that took Polaris Dawn, the first mission to achieve a civilian spacewalk, last year.
“I think 60 or 70 percent of the time I randomly look out the window, I see white,” Wang said in a video he shared on X, the social platform owned by SpaceX founder Elon Musk.
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