(CNN) NASA's ICON mission to explore where Earth's weather meets space weather was expected to launch early Wednesday, but did not go up. The next launch opportunity will be Thursday, the space agency said, but there is no official launch date selected yet.

Initially the launch was scheduled for October, but NASA wanted to conduct more pre-launch testing on the rocket.

"After years of work, I'm excited to get into orbit and turn on the spacecraft, open the doors on all our instruments," said Thomas Immel, ICON principal investigator at the University of California, Berkeley. "ICON carries incredible capacity for science. I'm looking forward to surprising results and finally seeing the world through its eyes."

ICON, or the Ionospheric Connection Explorer, will capture a closer view from within the upper atmosphere itself, 350 miles above Earth. ICON can also directly measure particles and how they move. It will operate amid bright bands of color known as airglow.

Airglow, which creates bands of red and green or purple and yellow light, happens when atoms and molecules in the upper atmosphere shed excess energy because they receive so much from the sun in this region.

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