Massive Martian ice discovery opens a window into red planet's history

Newly discovered layers of ice buried a mile beneath Mars' north pole are the remnants of ancient polar ice sheets and could be one of the largest water reservoirs on the planet, according to scientists at The University of Texas at Austin and the University of Arizona. The team made the discovery using measurements gathered by the Shallow Radar (SHARAD) on NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). SHARAD emits radar waves that can penetrate up to a mile and a half beneath the surface of Mars. The findings, published May 22 in Geophysical Research Letters, are important because the layers of ice are a record of past climate on Mars in much the same way that tree rings are a record of past climate on Earth. Studying the geometry and composition of these layers could tell scientists whether climate conditions were previously favorable for life, researchers said. The team found layers of sand and ice that were as much as 90% water in some places. If melted, the newly discovered polar ice would be equivalent to a global layer of water around Mars at least 1.5 meters (5 feet) deep. "We didn't expect to find this much water ice here," said lead author Stefano Nerozzi, a graduate research assistant at the University of Texas Institute for Geophysics (UTIG) who is completing his Ph.D. at the Jackson School of Geosciences. "That likely makes it the third largest water reservoir on Mars after the polar ice caps." The findings were corroborated by an independent study using gravity data instead of radar, led by researchers at Johns Hopkins University. Nerozzi was a co-author. The papers have been published simultaneously in Geophysical Research Letters.

The authors think that the layers formed when ice accumulated at the poles during past ice ages on Mars. Each time the planet warmed, a remnant of the ice caps became covered by sand, which protected the ice from solar radiation and prevented it from dissipating into the atmosphere.

Scientists have long known about glacial events on Mars, which are driven by variations in the planet's orbit and tilt. Over periods of about 50,000 years, Mars leans toward the sun before gradually returning to an upright position, like a wobbling spinning top. When the planet spins upright, the equator faces the sun, allowing the polar ice caps to grow. As the planet tilts, the ice caps retreat, perhaps vanishing entirely.

Until now, scientists thought that the ancient ice caps were lost. The paper shows that in fact significant ice sheet remnants have survived under the planet's surface, trapped in alternating bands of ice and sand, like layers on a cake.

Co-author Jack Holt, a professor at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory of the University of Arizona, said that the study provides new, important insights into the exchange of water ice between the poles and the midlatitudes, where his research group previously confirmed the presence of widespread glaciers, also using the SHARAD instrument.

"Surprisingly, the total volume of water locked up in these buried polar deposits is roughly the same as all the water ice known to exist in glaciers and buried ice layers at lower latitudes on Mars, and they are approximately the same age," he said.

Holt, who was a UTIG scientist and research professor for 19 years before joining the University of Arizona in 2018, has been a co-investigator with SHARAD since the spacecraft arrived at Mars in 2006.

Nerozzi said that studying this record of past polar glaciation could help determine whether Mars was ever habitable.

"Understanding how much water was available globally versus what's trapped in the poles is important if you're going to have liquid water on Mars," Nerozzi said. "You can have all the right conditions for life, but if most of the water is locked up at the poles, then it becomes difficult to have sufficient amounts of liquid water near the equator."

Chinese lunar rover's "lucky" find could unlock secrets of moon and earth

China's Yutu-2, the first rover on the far side of the moon, has found materials from deep inside the moon that could help unravel the mystery of the lunar mantle composition and the formation and evolution of the moon and the earth. Using data obtained by the visible and near infrared spectrometer installed on Yutu-2, a research team led by Li Chunlai, with the National Astronomical Observatories of China under the Chinese Academy of Sciences, found that the lunar soil in the landing area of the Chang'e-4 probe contains olivine and pyroxene which came from the lunar mantle deep inside the moon. The first important scientific discovery of the Chang'e-4 probe since it made the first-ever soft landing on the far side of the moon was published online in the latest issue of the academic journal Nature. The moon comprises a core, mantle and crust, like the earth. With the evolution of lunar magma, the light plagioclase rose to the upper layer to form the lunar crust, while the heavier olivine and pyroxene sank to form the lunar mantle, Li said. "But since the lunar crust is very thick, and there has been no volcanic activity and plate movement on the moon for billions of years, it's hard to find materials from the lunar mantle on the surface," Li said. The composition of the lunar mantle has long been the subject of theory. Neither the lunar samples from missions by the United States and Soviet Union, nor the remote sensing probes orbiting the moon have provided direct evidence of the accurate composition of the lunar mantle. Chinese scientists focused on a special area on the far side of the moon - the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) Basin, which was formed by a celestial collision over 4 billion years ago. With a diameter of 2,500 km and a depth of about 13 km, the basin is the oldest and largest impact crater on the moon.

After Chang'e-4 successfully landed on the Von Karman Crater in SPA Basin on Jan. 3 this year, the Yutu-2 rover obtained good quality spectral data at two sites.

"The data, unlike that obtained by Yutu on the near side of the moon, gave us a pleasant surprise," said Li.

Analysis showed the lunar soil in the landing area contains a large amount of olivine, low-calcium pyroxene and a small amount of high-calcium pyroxene, which are very likely from the lunar mantle, Li said.

So how did the materials from deep inside the moon get there?

After analyzing the high-resolution remote sensing images and the hyperspectral data, the researchers believed the materials were ejected from a 72-km-wide crater named Finsen to the northeast of the Von Karman Crater.

Li explained that after the SPA Basin was formed, more small asteroids crashed into the area, leading to more small craters. The collision that caused the Finsen Crater might have been so violent that the materials were knocked into the Von Karman Crater.

When scientists were selecting the landing site for Chang'e-4, flat areas were given priority. However, most of the flat areas on the moon are basalt formed as magma solidified.

It was lucky that Chang'e-4 probe landed in a region where the basalt is covered by lunar mantle debris.

"Furthermore, the rover is driving at the edge of the ejecta. According to our calculation, it might reach the basalt area in another 2 km or so. When it reaches the basalt area, we can compare the composition of the different lunar soils," Li said.

He said the study could provide a reference for a future mission to collect and return with samples and even the construction of a lunar base.

If the planned Chang'e-6 probe can go to that area, it would not only get the first-ever sample from the far side of the moon, but also have the chance to collect samples of materials coming from deep inside the moon, Li said.

"Most of the evolution of the moon happened about 3 billion years ago, while the early history of Earth before 3 billion years ago has been erased by geological activities. The moon is like a fossil that gives a glimpse of the early history of Earth," Li added.

Beresheet Impact Site Spotted

The photo above shows the landing site of the Israeli Beresheet spacecraft on a region of the Moon called Sea of Serenity, or Mare Serenitatis in Latin. On April 11, 2019, SpaceIL, a non-profit organization, attempted to land its spacecraft in this ancient volcanic field on the nearside of the Moon. After a smooth initial descent, Beresheet made a hard landing on the surface. As soon as its orbit placed NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) over the landing site on April 22, 2019, LRO imaged Beresheet's impact site. The LRO Camera (LROC) consists of three imagers: a seven-color Wide Angle Camera (WAC) and two black-and-white Narrow Angle Cameras (NAC) mounted on the LRO, which has been studying the Moon from orbit for a decade. NAC captured the Beresheet impact photo. LROC took this image from 56 miles (90 kilometers) above the surface. The cameras captured a dark smudge, about 10 meters wide, that indicates the point of impact. The dark tone suggests a surface roughened by the hard landing, which is less reflective than a clean, smooth surface. From so far away, LROC could not detect whether Beresheet formed a surface crater upon impact. It's possible the crater is just too small to show up in photos. Another possibility is that Beresheet formed a small indent instead of a crater, given its low angle of approach (around 8.4 degrees relative to the surface), light mass (compared to a dense meteoroid of the same size), and low velocity (again, relative to a meteoroid of the same size; Beresheet's speed was still faster than most speeding bullets).

The light halo around the smudge could have formed from gas associated with the impact or from fine soil particles blown outward during Beresheet's descent, which smoothed out the soil around the landing site, making it highly reflective.

There are many clues that we're actually looking at a man-made crater instead of a meteoroid-caused one. This is an important consideration, since the Moon, having no atmosphere, is constantly bombarded by space rocks that leave craters.

Most importantly, we knew the coordinates of the landing site within a few miles thanks to radio tracking of Beresheet, and we have 11 "before" images of the area, spanning a decade, and three "after" images. In all of these images, including one taken 16 days before the landing, we saw only one new feature of the size Beresheet would have created.

Existing mathematical models helped us estimate the size and shape of the crater that would have formed if an object of Beresheet's mass and velocity struck the surface. We also referenced craters created by similar-size spacecraft (GRAIL, LADEE, Ranger) that have struck the Moon at about the same speed, and we saw that the white tail stretching from the landing halo towards the south is a shape that's consistent with Beresheet's southward descent trajectory and angle of approach.

For the before image above, we used a photo from December 16, 2016. This is because the lighting conditions that day, based on the angle at which the Sun would have illuminated the Moon at that particular time in its orbit, were the most similar to the April 22 image.

Because LRO was beyond the horizon during Beresheet's descent and landing, it couldn't capture a photo until its orbit brought it nearby 11 days later. LRO passes over the lunar poles with each revolution. Meanwhile, the Moon rotates on its axis below the spacecraft, allowing LRO to pass over every part of the Moon twice a month (once during lunar night and once during lunar day). LROC may take more images of the landing site when it passes the same area again on May 19.

Efforts are ongoing to bounce laser pulses from the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter, also on board LRO, to measure the return from the Laser Retroreflector Array of small corner cube mirrors. This instrument was provided by NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and was installed on the top deck of the Beresheet spacecraft. Attempts are ongoing to examine if the retroreflector may have survived the impact.

What a dying star's ashes tell us about the birth of our solar system

A grain of dust forged in the death throes of a long-gone star was discovered by a team of researchers led by the University of Arizona. The discovery challenges some of the current theories about how dying stars seed the universe with raw materials for the formation of planets and, ultimately, the precursor molecules of life. Tucked inside a chondritic meteorite collected in Antarctica, the tiny speck represents actual stardust, most likely hurled into space by an exploding star before our own sun existed. Although such grains are believed to provide important raw materials contributing to the mix from which the sun and our planets formed, they rarely survive the turmoil that goes with the birth of a solar system. "As actual dust from stars, such presolar grains give us insight into the building blocks from which our solar system formed," said Pierre Haenecour, lead author of the paper, which is scheduled for advance online publication on Nature Astronomy's website on Apr. 29. "They also provide us with a direct snapshot of the conditions in a star at the time when this grain was formed." Dubbed LAP-149, the dust grain represents the only known assemblage of graphite and silicate grains that can be traced to a specific type of stellar explosion called a nova. Remarkably, it survived the journey through interstellar space and traveled to the region that would become our solar system some 4.5 billion years ago, perhaps earlier, where it became embedded in a primitive meteorite. Novae are binary star systems in which a core remnant of a star, called a white dwarf, is on its way to fading out of the universe, while its companion is either a low-mass main sequence star or a red giant. The white dwarf then begins syphoning material off its bloated companion. Once it accretes enough new stellar material, the white dwarf re-ignites in periodic outbursts violent enough to forge new chemical elements from the stellar fuel and spew them deep into space, where they can travel to new stellar systems and become incorporated in their raw materials.

Since shortly after the Big Bang, when the universe consisted of only hydrogen, helium and traces of lithium, stellar explosions have contributed to the chemical enrichment of the cosmos, resulting in the plethora of elements we see today.

Taking advantage of sophisticated ion and electron microscopy facilities at the UA's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, a research team led by Haenecour analyzed the microbe-sized dust grain down to the atomic level. The tiny messenger from outer space turned out to be truly alien - highly enriched in a carbon isotope called 13C.

"The carbon isotopic compositions in anything we have ever sampled that came from any planet or body in our solar system varies typically by a factor on the order of 50," said Haenecour, who will join the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory as an assistant professor in the fall. "The 13C we found in LAP-149 is enriched more than 50,000-fold. These results provide further laboratory evidence that both carbon- and oxygen-rich grains from novae contributed to the building blocks of our solar system."

Although their parent stars no longer exist, the isotopic and chemical compositions and microstructure of individual stardust grains identified in meteorites provide unique constraints on dust formation and thermodynamic conditions in stellar outflows, the authors wrote.

Detailed analysis revealed even more unexpected secrets: Unlike similar dust grains thought to have been forged in dying stars, LAP-149 is the first known grain consisting of graphite that contains an oxygen-rich silicate inclusion.

"Our find provides us with a glimpse into a process we could never witness on Earth," Haenecour added. "It tells us about how dust grains form and move around inside as they are expelled by the nova. We now know that carbonaceous and silicate dust grains can form in the same nova ejecta, and they get transported across chemically distinct clumps of dust within the ejecta, something that was predicted by models of novae but never found in a specimen."

Unfortunately, LAP-149 does not contain enough atoms to determine its exact age, so researchers hope to find similar, larger specimens in the future.

"If we could date these objects someday, we could get a better idea of what our galaxy looked like in our region and what triggered the formation of the solar system," said Tom Zega, scientific director of the UA's Kuiper Materials Imaging and Characterization Facility and associate professor in the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory and UA Department of Materials Science and Engineering.

"Perhaps we owe our existence to a nearby supernova explosion, compressing clouds of gas and dust with its shockwave, igniting stars and creating stellar nurseries, similar to what we see in Hubble's famous 'Pillars of Creation' picture."

The meteorite containing the speck of stardust is one of the most pristine meteorites in the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory's collection. Classified as a carbonaceous chondrite, it is believed to be analogous to the material on Bennu, the target asteroid of the UA-led OSIRIS-REx mission. By taking a sample of Bennu and bringing it back to Earth, the OSIRIS-REx mission team hopes to provide scientists with material that has seen little, if any, alteration since the formation of our solar system.

Until then, researchers depend on rare finds like LAP-149, which survived being blasted from an exploding star, caught in a collapsing cloud of gas and dust that would become our solar system and baked into an asteroid before falling to the earth.

"It's remarkable when you think about all the ways along the way that should have killed this grain," Zega said.

Rare-Earth metals in the atmosphere of a glowing-hot exoplanet

KELT-9 b is the hottest exoplanet known to date. In the summer of 2018, a joint team of astronomers from the universities of Bern and Geneva found signatures of gaseous iron and titanium in its atmosphere. Now these researchers have also been able to detect traces of vaporized sodium, magnesium, chromium, and the rare-Earth metals scandium and yttrium. Exoplanets are planets outside our solar system that orbit around stars other than the Sun. Since the discovery of the first exoplanets in the mid-90's, well over 3'000 exoplanets have been discovered. Many of these planets are extreme compared to the planets in our solar system: Hot gas giants that orbit incredibly close to their host stars, sometimes within periods of less than a few days. Such planets do not exist in our solar system, and their existence has defied predictions of how and why planets form. For the past 20 years, astronomers from all over the world have been working to understand where these planets come from, what they are made of, and what their climates are like. An extremely hot gas giant KELT-9 is a star located 650 light years from the Earth in the constellation Cygnus. Its exoplanet KELT-9 b exemplifies the most extreme of these so-called hot-Jupiters because it orbits very closely around its star that is almost twice as hot as the Sun. Therefore, its atmosphere reaches temperatures of around 4'000 C. In such heat, all elements are almost completely vaporized and molecules are broken apart into their constituent atoms - much like is the case in the outer layers of stars. This means that the atmosphere contains no clouds or aerosols and the sky is clear, mostly transparent to light from its star.

The atoms that make up the gas of the atmosphere absorb light at very specific colors in the spectrum, and each atom has a unique "fingerprint" of colors that it absorbs. These fingerprints can be measured with a sensitive spectrograph mounted on a large telescope, allowing astronomers to discern the chemical composition of the atmospheres of planets that are many light-years away.

The exoplanet as a treasure trove

A team of researchers from the Universities of Bern and Geneva collaborated to use this technique, and made an interesting discovery: "Using the HARPS-North spectrograph on the Italian National Telescope on the island of La Palma, we found iron and titanium atoms in the hot atmosphere of KELT-9 b", explains Kevin Heng, Director and Professor at the Center for Space and Habitabilty (CSH) at the University of Bern and a member of the National Centre of Competence in Research PlanetS.

The team observed the KELT-9 system for a second time last summer, with the goal of confirming their previous detections, but also to proceed to search for additional elements that could be present in the data as well. Their survey included 73 atoms, among which some so-called rare-Earth metals. These substances are less common on Earth, but are applied in advanced materials and devices.

Jens Hoeijmakers, who is the first author of the study which is now published in the Journal Astronomy and Astrophysics and who is a Postdoc at the CSH in Bern and at Geneva Observatory, says: "Our team predicted that the spectrum of this planet could well be a treasure trove where a multitude of species can be detected that have not been observed in the atmosphere of any other planet before."

After careful analysis, the researchers indeed found strong signals of vaporized sodium, magnesium, chromium and the rare-Earth metals scandium and yttrium in the spectrum of the planet. The latter three of these have never been detected robustly in the atmosphere of an exoplanet before.

"The team also advanced their interpretation of this data, and were able to use these signals to estimate at what altitude in the planet's atmosphere these atoms are absorbing", says Jens Hoeijmakers. What is more, the researchers also know more about strong global wind patterns high up in the atmosphere that blow the material from one hemisphere to the other.

"With further observations, many more elements may well be discovered by using the same technique in the atmosphere of this planet in the future, and perhaps also on other planets that are heated to similarly high temperatures", explains Jens Hoeijmakers.

Kevin Heng adds: "The chances are good that one day we will find so-called biosignatures, i.e. signs of life, on an exoplanet, using the same techniques that we are applying today. Ultimately, we want to use our research to fathom the origin and development of the solar system as well as the origin of life."

New Clues About How Ancient Galaxies Lit up the Universe

NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope has revealed that some of the universe's earliest galaxies were brighter than expected. The excess light is a byproduct of the galaxies releasing incredibly high amounts of ionizing radiation. The finding offers clues to the cause of the Epoch of Reionization, a major cosmic event that transformed the universe from being mostly opaque to the brilliant starscape seen today. In a new study, researchers report on observations of some of the first galaxies to form in the universe, less than 1 billion years after the big bang (or a little more than 13 billion years ago). The data show that in a few specific wavelengths of infrared light, the galaxies are considerably brighter than scientists anticipated. The study is the first to confirm this phenomenon for a large sampling of galaxies from this period, showing that these were not special cases of excessive brightness, but that even average galaxies present at that time were much brighter in these wavelengths than galaxies we see today. No one knows for sure when the first stars in our universe burst to life. But evidence suggests that between about 100 million and 200 million years after the big bang, the universe was filled mostly with neutral hydrogen gas that had perhaps just begun to coalesce into stars, which then began to form the first galaxies. By about 1 billion years after the big bang, the universe had become a sparkling firmament. Something else had changed, too: Electrons of the omnipresent neutral hydrogen gas had been stripped away in a process known as ionization. The Epoch of Reionization - the changeover from a universe full of neutral hydrogen to one filled with ionized hydrogen - is well documented.

Before this universe-wide transformation, long-wavelength forms of light, such as radio waves and visible light, traversed the universe more or less unencumbered. But shorter wavelengths of light - including ultraviolet light, X-rays and gamma rays - were stopped short by neutral hydrogen atoms. These collisions would strip the neutral hydrogen atoms of their electrons, ionizing them.

But what could have possibly produced enough ionizing radiation to affect all the hydrogen in the universe? Was it individual stars? Giant galaxies? If either were the culprit, those early cosmic colonizers would have been different than most modern stars and galaxies, which typically don't release high amounts of ionizing radiation. Then again, perhaps something else entirely caused the event, such as quasars - galaxies with incredibly bright centers powered by huge amounts of material orbiting supermassive black holes.

"It's one of the biggest open questions in observational cosmology," said Stephane De Barros, lead author of the study and a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. "We know it happened, but what caused it? These new findings could be a big clue."

Looking for Light

To peer back in time to the era just before the Epoch of Reionization ended, Spitzer stared at two regions of the sky for more than 200 hours each, allowing the space telescope to collect light that had traveled for more than 13 billion years to reach us.

As some of the longest science observations ever carried out by Spitzer, they were part of an observing campaign called GREATS, short for GOODS Re-ionization Era wide-Area Treasury from Spitzer. GOODS (itself an acronym: Great Observatories Origins Deep Survey) is another campaign that performed the first observations of some GREATS targets. The study, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, also used archival data from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.

Using these ultra-deep observations by Spitzer, the team of astronomers observed 135 distant galaxies and found that they were all particularly bright in two specific wavelengths of infrared light produced by ionizing radiation interacting with hydrogen and oxygen gases within the galaxies. This implies that these galaxies were dominated by young, massive stars composed mostly of hydrogen and helium. They contain very small amounts of "heavy" elements (like nitrogen, carbon and oxygen) compared to stars found in average modern galaxies.

These stars were not the first stars to form in the universe (those would have been composed of hydrogen and helium only) but were still members of a very early generation of stars. The Epoch of Reionization wasn't an instantaneous event, so while the new results are not enough to close the book on this cosmic event, they do provide new details about how the universe evolved at this time and how the transition played out.

"We did not expect that Spitzer, with a mirror no larger than a Hula-Hoop, would be capable of seeing galaxies so close to the dawn of time," said Michael Werner, Spitzer's project scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "But nature is full of surprises, and the unexpected brightness of these early galaxies, together with Spitzer's superb performance, puts them within range of our small but powerful observatory."

NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, set to launch in 2021, will study the universe in many of the same wavelengths observed by Spitzer. But where Spitzer's primary mirror is only 85 centimeters (33.4 inches) in diameter, Webb's is 6.5 meters (21 feet) - about 7.5 times larger - enabling Webb to study these galaxies in far greater detail. In fact, Webb will try to detect light from the first stars and galaxies in the universe. The new study shows that due to their brightness in those infrared wavelengths, the galaxies observed by Spitzer will be easier for Webb to study than previously thought.

"These results by Spitzer are certainly another step in solving the mystery of cosmic reionization," said Pascal Oesch, an assistant professor at the University of Geneva and a co-author on the study. "We now know that the physical conditions in these early galaxies were very different than in typical galaxies today. It will be the job of the James Webb Space Telescope to work out the detailed reasons why."

Rocket Lab launches three research satellites for US Air Force

A Rocket Lab Electron launch vehicle successfully lifted off from Launch Complex 1 on New Zealand's Mahia Peninsula at 06:00 UTC, Sunday 5 May 2019 (18:00 NZST). The STP-27RD mission launched three research and development satellites for the DoD Space Test Program that will demonstrate advanced space technologies, including a satellite to evaluate new ways of tracking space debris. The mission is Rocket Lab's second for 2019 and took the total number of satellites deployed to orbit by the company to 28. The DoD Space Test Program, under Air Force Space Command's Space and Missile Systems Center, procured the STP-27RD mission in partnership with Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) as part of the Rapid Agile Launch Initiative. This initiative leveraged Other Transaction (OT) authority to competitively rapidly award DoD launch service contracts with non-traditional, commercial small launch companies. "It's a testament to our team and mission partners that Electron has placed another three satellites in orbit, just weeks after our flawless mission for DARPA," says Rocket Lab Founder and CEO Peter Beck. "We're proud to have delivered 100% mission success for the launch procured by the Department of Defense's Rapid Agile Launch Initiative, proving once again Rocket Lab's ability to provide responsive and streamlined space access."

Approximately 54 minutes after lift-off, the Electron launch vehicle's Kick Stage successfully deployed the three payloads to their designated orbits. The Space Plug and Play Architecture Research CubeSat-1 (SPARC-1) mission, sponsored by the Air Force Research Laboratory Space Vehicles Directorate (AFRL/RV), is a joint Swedish-United States experiment to explore technology developments in avionics miniaturization, software defined radio systems, and space situational awareness (SSA). T

he Falcon Orbital Debris Experiment (Falcon ODE), sponsored by the United States Air Force Academy, will evaluate ground-based tracking of space objects. Harbinger, a commercial small satellite built by York Space Systems and sponsored by the U.S Army, will demonstrate the ability of an experimental commercial system to meet DoD space capability requirements.

The STP-27RD mission carried Rocket Lab's heaviest payload to date, with the three satellites weighing in at around 180 kg. The highly experienced Rocket Lab team have now delivered 28 satellites into orbit, enabling operations in space debris mitigation, Earth observation, ship and airplane tracking and radio communications.

Rocket Lab's manifest is booked with monthly launches for the remainder of 2019 for a range of commercial and U.S. Government customers. Rocket Lab will scale to a launch every two weeks by the end of the year.

The majority of launches in 2019 are scheduled to lift-off from Launch Complex 1, with the first mission from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 2 at Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia scheduled for late 2019.