CBS News Space Consultant Bill Harwood has been covering the U.S. space program full-time since 1984, first as Cape Canaveral bureau chief for United Press International and now as a consultant for CBS News. Unlike Isaacman, no one on the Fram2 mission is a licensed pilot. While Blue Origin has launched non-pilot crews to the edge of space in sub-orbital New Shepard flights , no crew has flown to orbit without at least one crew member with aviation expertise or astronaut experience. SpaceX says Fram2 will help refine training procedures aimed at opening up spaceflight to more and more non-professionals. "As a roboticist, I'm so hyped about Dragon being an autonomous vehicle which really, I think, shows you how much times are changing in the space sector," Rogge said. "We are really at a crucial point in time where the spacecraft does so many of the tasks itself. "I think that really spearheads the accessibility to space, right? Because the dream is (to) have many people in space if we want to live and work there as a civilization." She added, "right now I think the stereotype of an astronaut is that, you know, super, super, super human, medically perfect. But we should really flip this question and be like, OK, how do we design living and working in space for everyone?" Plans for orbiting around the poles The crew plans to carry out 22 experiments during the flight, ranging from filming auroral displays from orbit to testing compact exercise equipment for use in smaller spacecraft, growing oyster mushrooms in microgravity and taking the first X-rays in space. Along with three high-end professional cameras, the crew is equipped with four iPad Minis, two iPhone Pro Max cellphones, three laptop computers, a ham radio "and even an X-ray generator, which we'll use to capture the first-ever X-ray image of the human body in space — something crucial for future long-duration missions to Mars and beyond," Chun posted on X. Also on board: a Starlink laser terminal mounted in the Crew Dragon's lower trunk section that will give the crew, in theory, data relay speeds of up to 100 gigabytes per second or better. To reach the planned orbit around the poles, one tilted 90 degrees to Earth's equator, the flight plan called for the Falcon 9 to follow a due-south trajectory carrying the crew above southern Florida, Cuba and Panama on the way to space. The 273-mile-high orbit will allow 55 passes above the poles between launch and splashdown. Jon Edwards, a SpaceX vice president who oversee Falcon 9 flight operations, said the Crew Dragon's flight software was modified to ensure the vehicle passes safely over populated areas, guiding the rocket as needed to keep the capsule or other components well away from any populated areas in an emergency. "We're going to fly out of 39A in Florida and go pretty much straight south," Edwards said. "In fact, the flight path is going to go over Florida. If you were in Miami and you looked straight up, you know, at the right time. would see the rocket and the crew flying right overhead. "What we call the instantaneous impact points, which is where, if we cut power, it would land, that will stay offshore, so it's totally safe to do this. But it will be flying over Florida and over Cuba and Panama and just to the west of Peru and Ecuador." A Falcon 9 rocket and the Crew Dragon "Resilience" awaiting blastoff atop pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. SpaceX NASA and the U.S. Space Force routinely launch military satellites and science probes into polar orbits from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California, where rockets can fly due south over the Pacific Ocean without passing over populated areas. But the maximum inclination for orbital payloads launched from the East Coast has traditionally been limited to avoid flying over areas where debris from a catastrophic failure might fall. In recent years, SpaceX has launched satellites into polar or near-polar orbits from Cape Canaveral, but no piloted flights. While NASA and the Air Force once planned to launch space shuttles into polar orbit from Vandenberg, the military space program changed priorities in the wake of the 1986 Challenge disaster and those plans were shelved six months before the initial flight. The polar orbit will provide spectacular views for the Fram2 crew that Mikkelsen plans to document, from the ice caps to shimmering auroras. The public is invited to share the experience, photographing auroras at the same time Fram2 is capturing the view from space. "We have reached out to 2.2 million auroral citizen scientists," she said. "And anyone can join, where you go outside if there is aurora where you live and you note where you live and you ... take a photo of the aurora at the same time as we and Fram2 fly over. "Local observatories are also activating their instruments so that we get this incredible data bank during our mission of the aurora from Earth and from space at the same time so we can understand ... what the phenomena can bring to humankind and specifically to satellite technology." Chun said the Fram2 mission is expected to last three days and 14 hours from launch to splashdown in the Pacific Ocean off the southern California coast. Space & Astronomy More