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

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.

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.

A bitcoin investor is headed to space with three polar explorers on the first flight to carry people over the north and south poles

Fram2 is the first human spaceflight to explore the Earth's polar regions. It launched on top of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.

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.

Find out the latest about SpaceX's private Fram2 polar astronaut mission for cryptocurrency billionaire Chun Wang.

Fram2, a first-of-its-kind private mission to send four astronauts into polar orbit around Earth, is about to launch

A unique mission called Fram2, paid for and led by a cryptocurrency billionaire who is flying with three guests, lifted off, carrying the crew into an orbit around the North and South poles. Follow live news updates.