[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 23 (Monday, March 9, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1564-S1565]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




CONGRATULATING DR. BILL FELDMAN, THE NASA TEAM AND LOS ALAMOS NATIONAL 
                               LABORATORY

  Mr. DOMENICI. Madam President, last Friday, the front page of the 
Washington Post discussed solid new evidence for water at the poles of 
the Moon. That news may have great implications for future lunar 
colonies. With costs around $10,000 per pound just to put material in 
orbit around the earth, this discovery could tremendously reduce costs 
for future manned lunar bases. Future lunar camps may be able to 
extract their water supplies, rather than hauling water with them. The 
whole NASA team deserves many compliments for their efforts leading up 
to this exciting news.
  I want to commend to your attention the role that New Mexico's Los 
Alamos National Laboratory, in partnership with the Southwest Research 
Institute, played in this momentous announcement. Los Alamos designed 
the neutron spectrometer aboard the Lunar Prospector that enabled these 
exciting measurements.
  The neutrons studied by the instrument come from natural cosmic rays 
that constantly bathe the moon. The neutrons are then slowed by 
interactions with hydrogen in water. The spectrometer detects the 
energy of neutrons leaving the lunar surface.
  The complexity of designing instrumentation and actually obtaining 
the data for a mission like this is immense. For Lunar Prospector, the 
instrumentation not only had to survive launch, but also the four and a 
half day trip to the moon, and the insertion into lunar orbit.
  Bill Feldman is the Los Alamos project leader for the Los Alamos 
instrumentation package. Feldman has experienced both the ecstasy of a 
successful mission and the agony of a failed one. He had 
instrumentation for mapping Martian water on the failed Mars Observer 
mission in 1993.
  The neutron spectrometer used for this mission builds on a 35 year 
history at Los Alamos of designing instruments for non-proliferation 
programs. Feldman's work on neutron spectrometers in space traces back 
to the Army Background Experiment, that he helped conduct in 1990, that 
measured the energies of neutrons encountered in orbit.
  For events like the Mars Observer or the Lunar Prospector, the team 
has to find ways to carefully check out their instruments. Sometimes 
those approaches are almost as daunting as the actual mission. For 
example, Feldman and his colleagues traveled to Antarctica where they 
took more than a ton of dirt and a detection package about 19 miles 
high on a balloon to see how cosmic rays would interact with the 
materials to provide practice for later real observations.
  Secretary of Energy Pena sent a nice note to Dr. Feldman and his team 
that I will read:


[[Page S1565]]


       Congratulations to you and your team of researchers that 
     helped make possible this week's announcement that the Lunar 
     Prospector has found evidence of water on the Moon. These 
     exciting results show that research from the Department of 
     Energy's national laboratories is truly ``out of this 
     world.'' Besides demonstrating the value of the Nation's 
     investment in science and technology, discoveries like this 
     excite and inspire young people to pursue science and 
     engineering as careers.

  Secretary Pena said it well. I add my congratulations in celebrating 
another momentous achievement from New Mexico and our national 
Laboratory in Los Alamos.
  Mr. D'AMATO addressed the Chair.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New York is recognized.

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