Photos: Russian cargo freighter blasts off from snow-covered launch pad

SpaceX said Tuesday it won’t perform a final countdown dress rehearsal this week for the giant new Starship launch vehicle, and could send the rocket — standing nearly 40 stories tall on its Texas launch pad — on an around-the-world test flight as soon as next week.

Astronauts Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken plan to reveal a name for their Crew Dragon spaceship on the day they launch from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on a test flight to restore orbital human spaceflight capability to the United States.

NASA’s Ionospheric Connection Explorer satellite was scheduled to launch Wednesday aboard an air-dropped Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket over the Atlantic Ocean, but managers aborted the mission after encountering a technical concern with the rocket following departure from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. The launcher’s L-1011 carrier jet returned to Florida.