The private Fram2 mission is launching later today, sending a crew of amateurs to an unprecedented polar orbit—a frontier never before explored by astronauts.

SpaceX is scheduled to launch a first-of-its-kind mission that will carry four private astronauts — or depending on how you see it, glorified space tourists — to orbit above the Earth's poles. Named "Fram2" after the Norwegian ship that made expeditions to both the Earth's poles around the turn of the 20th century,