TONIGHT at around 9.30pm BST, the first of the new SpaceX crewed flights into space should take off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

Weather permitting, SpaceX will launch its first passengers into space, beginning a new era of spaceflight for the USA which will see for the first time in nearly a decade people being launched into orbit from American soil.

It will also be historic, as the first occasion that a privately-owned, designed and developed spacecraft will take its two astronauts into space.

The astronauts are from Nasa but have been training with SpaceX for two years. They will fly aboard the Crew Dragon spacecraft atop a re-usable Falcon 9 aircraft to dock with the International Space Station in a mission called Demo-2.

Former space shuttle pilot Robert Behnken, 49, will be the joint operations commander for the mission, responsible for activities such as rendezvous, docking and undocking, and other activities while the spacecraft is docked to the ISS.

Also a former shuttle pilot, Doug Hurley, 53, will be the spacecraft commander for Demo-2, responsible for activities such as launch, landing and recovery.

Space Exploration Technologies Group, or SpaceX for short, is chiefly the brainchild of Elon Musk and the company’s aim is to be able to provide the USA and eventually other countries with a so-called “taxi service” into space.

The US ambassador to the UK, Robert Wood Johnson, tweeted: “Astronauts launch to space – a new era of human spaceflight begins! Watch live in United Kingdom tomorrow at 9.33pm – you don’t want to miss it!”

Axios news website reported last night: “At the moment, the US Air Force is predicting a 60% chance that weather conditions will be favourable for launch on Wednesday.

“Because the Crew Dragon has an abort system that would take the capsule far from a failing rocket in the event of a mishap, allowing it to splash down safely in the ocean, weather also has to be good at various points along the Eastern seaboard, making weather conditions a limiting factor for an on-time launch.

“If the rocket doesn’t get off the pad on Wednesday, the next launch opportunity would be Saturday.”

There has been a setback for Richard Branson’s Virgin Orbit project, however. It failed to launch properly from a converted jumbo jet and the flight was aborted.