Live coverage: Falcon 9 rocket launches, and lands, at Cape Canaveral

A Ukrainian-built Zenit booster and a Russian-made Fregat upper stage launched with an Angolan communications satellite Tuesday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, but engineers lost contact with the spacecraft soon after its deployment in orbit more than 22,000 miles above Earth.

The Starlink 10-25 mission will also set a new reuse milestone for the first stage booster, which is flying for a record-setting 29th time. Liftoff from pad 40 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station is scheduled for 2:28 a.m. EDT (0628 UTC).

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.