Watch: SpaceX launches civilian crew on first private spacewalk mission into Earth’s radiation belts

Watch as SpaceX's Polaris Dawn mission launches from Nasa's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Tuesday, 10 September.

Billionaire entrepreneur Jared Isaacman, retired Air Force colonel Scott Poteet, and SpaceX employees Sarah Gillis and Anna Menon will launch a mission on SpaceX's Crew Dragon to attempt the first-ever private spacewalk.

It will be the spacecraft's fifth - and riskiest - private space mission so far.

Last month, an attempt to launch was postponed hours before liftoff following a small helium leak in ground equipment on SpaceX's launchpad.

The leak was fixed but the company's Falcon 9 was grounded by US regulators over a booster recovery failure during an unrelated mission, delaying the Polaris launch further.

"Crew safety is absolutely paramount and this mission carries more risk than usual, as it will be the furthest humans have travelled from Earth since Apollo and the first commercial spacewalk!," Elon Musk, SpaceX's CEO, wrote on his social media site X.