By Joey Roulette and Gerry Doyle
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A crew of four private astronauts on Tuesday were in the final stages of preparation for a risky SpaceX mission to attempt the first-ever private spacewalk using the company's new spacesuits and a redesigned spacecraft.
A billionaire entrepreneur, a retired military fighter pilot and two SpaceX employees are poised to launch at 3:38 a.m. ET (0738 GMT) from NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule, the spacecraft's fifth - and riskiest - private space mission so far.
An attempt to launch last month was postponed hours before liftoff over a small helium leak in ground equipment on SpaceX's launchpad. SpaceX fixed the leak, but the company's Falcon 9 was then grounded by U.S. regulators over a booster recovery failure during an unrelated mission, further delaying the Polaris launch.
Permitted to resume Falcon 9 flights, the Polaris mission is now set for a pre-dawn launch Tuesday, but with only a 40% chance of favorable weather, according to U.S. Space Force launch weather modeling. SpaceX has other launch opportunities Tuesday at 5:23 a.m. and 7:09 a.m.