A Falcon 9 rocket lifted off on Monday night, sending four amateur astronauts on an unprecedented journey around Earth’s poles. The mission is traveling where no crew has gone before, and SpaceX just revealed the first views of the planet’s chilly polar regions from above.

The recently launched Fram2 mission, which is funded and led by cryptocurrency billionaire Chun Wang, will attempt to grow mushrooms, test out hormone diapers and X-ray civilian astronauts. However, experts say that these novel experiments are unlikely to yield meaningful results.

The crew will observe Earth's polar regions 430 kilometers above the surface, allowing the Crew Dragon Resilience to travel from the North to South Pole under an hour.

SpaceX successfully launched Fram2, the first crewed mission to orbit Earth's poles, on Monday night from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The historic mission is carrying four civilians from four countries.

The Fram2 astronauts launched from Kennedy Space Center Pad 39A on a stormy Monday night. Here's what we know about this mysterious mission of firsts.

Fram2 will send four people from four different nations to low Earth orbit for three to five days. Those crewmembers — all of them spaceflight rookies — are mission commander Chun Wang of Malta, vehicle commander Jannicke Mikkelsen of Norway, pilot Rabea Rogge of Germany, and Australian Eric Phillips, Fram2's medical officer and mission specialist.

SpaceX has launched a privately funded space mission over Earth's poles. This is the first human spaceflight to fly over the Earth's poles. Here's what makes it special.

A SpaceX spacecraft carrying four astronauts is on a pioneering journey circling Earth over its poles after launching Monday night from Florida.

Elon Musk's SpaceX on Monday launched a crew of four private astronauts led by a crypto entrepreneur on a mission to orbit Earth from pole to pole, a novel trajectory in which no humans have traveled before.