Lightning flashed in the distance as storms rolled off shore, yet the launch occurred without delay. Original story: Tonight, a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket will launch the Fram2 crew into an orbit never flown by astronauts − around the North and South Pole.

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 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.

The SpaceX rocket and spacecraft technology company scrubbed its launch of 27 satellites Tuesday from California.

Fram2, the third private spaceflight purchased from SpaceX, is scheduled to launch no earlier than March 31st from Kennedy Space Center. The crew of four, led by cryptocurrency investor Chun Wang, will be the first humans to orbit over Earth's poles.

SpaceX on Monday launched another batch of satellites from Starlink mission launches from Florida on Monday afternoon, about 5 1/2 hours before another Falcon 9 nearby sent a privately funded crew into space.

Fram2 astronauts were busy over the weekend with preparations for their upcoming SpaceX launch for their mission to orbit Earth’s north and south poles.

During the first quarter of the year, 27 orbital rockets took flight from Florida's Space Coast. That equates to a cadence of 108 launches by year's end — a record-breaking pace that would erase last year's record of 93 annual liftoffs.