PREVIEW

A SpaceX Dragon spacecraft that will carry four civilian astronauts sits atop a Falcon 9 rocket on launch complex 39A of NASA's Kennedy Space Center ahead of the scheduled Polaris Dawn launch on September 9, 2024, at Merritt Island, Florida.

The crew members will carry out the first-ever spacewalk by private astronauts. After several scrubbed launch attempts, SpaceX and Jared Isaacman, the billionaire founder of payments platform Shift4 and commander of this mission, are scheduled to try again at 3:38 a.m. on September 10, with weather for both liftoff and splashdown sites for the spacecraft's return to Earth remaining a concern