No one saw Earth's poles from space in the more than 400 human spaceflight missions preceding Fram2. The closest any crew mission has gotten to the poles was the Soviet Union's Vostok 6 mission in 1963, when Valentina Tereshkova's spacecraft reached a latitude of 65.1 degrees.

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.

In contrast, the Fram2 mission's 90-degree inclination means it will pass directly over both the North and South Poles. This path provides comprehensive coverage of Earth's surface, enabling observations of regions and phenomena not accessible to other missions.