Continuing a series of delays keeping NASA’s Ionospheric Connection Explorer on Earth, NASA announced Tuesday that the satellite’s launch aboard an air-dropped Northrop Grumman Pegasus XL rocket will not occur as scheduled Friday.

The $252 million science mission was set launch from an airborne carrier jet around 4:05 a.m. EDT (0805 GMT) Friday, but NASA said Tuesday mission managers decided to delay the flight “to conduct further pre-launch testing on the rocket.”

NASA and Northrop Grumman have delayed the launch of the agency’s Ionospheric Connection Explorer, or ICON, to conduct further pre-launch testing on the rocket. Upon completion of the testing, a new launch date will be established.

Four months after standing down launch operations of the ICON mission on their Pegasus rocket, Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems is entering the home stretch for a realigned launch on 26 October 2018 at 04:05 EDT (0805 UTC) over the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Cape Canaveral, Florida.

This week, Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems managers for both ICON and Pegasus sat down with NASASpaceflight’s Chris Gebhardt to discuss what happened back in June as well as the current status of both vehicles in the final weeks before launch.