[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 26 (Thursday, March 12, 1998)]
[House]
[Pages H1144-H1145]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                        LUNAR PROSPECTOR MISSION

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Florida (Mr. Weldon) is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. WELDON of Florida. Mr. Speaker, it is an honor for me to rise 
today and speak out in support of the men and women at NASA and at 
Spaceport Florida who are responsible for the recent very successful 
Lunar Prospector mission. And actually, this is an ongoing mission. The 
probe is still orbiting the Moon.
  First of all, let me talk about Spaceport Florida. Spaceport Florida 
is a new entity. Some people may ask, ``What is a spaceport?'' 
Traditionally, most of the launches that have been done at Cape 
Canaveral have been done by the Federal Government, either the Air 
Force or NASA. Years ago, the State of Florida realized that, with the 
emerging commercial launch industry, that it would be very helpful to 
have a State agency that would actually launch rockets.
  To my left on this easel is the first mission, the Lunar Prospector 
mission; and what we have here shown is the Lockheed Martin Athena II 
launch vehicle, which is this rocket right here. There are several 
State-sponsored spaceports, as we call them. They are like an airport 
or seaport, a place where you take off to another place. Instead of in 
an airplane, it is a rocket that is taking off.
  Florida has the first successful launch of a rocket from its State-
sponsored spaceport. And one of the big advantages of this is that it 
saves money. By having a spaceport handle it, we can cut back on a lot 
of bureaucracy and costs and be able to do things more efficiently. 
This whole mission, this Lunar Prospector mission, is part of what they 
call the faster, better, cheaper mode of doing things.
  The reason this mission went off was because several years ago there 
was another mission. It was called Clementine. That was sponsored by 
both the Department of Defense and by NASA, which showed a suggestion 
that there might actually be ice on the Moon.

[[Page H1145]]

  Now, on top of this rocket here, up there, was this probe called the 
Lunar Prospector, which is shown on this other visual that I have here. 
And the Prospector's mission was to map the surface of the Moon's crust 
and to search for conclusive evidence of water, or hydrogen. Water is 
made up of two parts hydrogen, one part oxygen. And the mission here 
was to look for that evidence of hydrogen on the surface of the Moon, 
which would be a sign that water is in the crust in a frozen form.
  This was done through Prospector's neutron spectrometer, which can 
sense the hydrogen down to a depth of half a meter, and it measures the 
emanations of neutrons from the surface, which are considered by 
scientists to be the signature, the indicator that ice exists within 
the frozen soil on the poles of the Moon.
  Well, lo and behold, what was discovered was very strong evidence. It 
is suspected that water exists on the lunar poles, possibly as much as 
one million tons of water, which is 30 billion gallons. It is enough 
water to equal a lake approximately 4 miles long, 4 miles wide, and one 
meter deep.
  How did they get there? Well, nobody really knows. It may have been 
deposited there by comets. Now, what is the significance of this? Well, 
the significance of this is huge. Number one, it means that if we were 
to try to establish a colony on the Moon, that water would not have to 
be brought to the Moon. So we would have a ready source of water there 
for humans should they ever colonize the Moon to form, say, an 
observatory to study the universe on the surface of the Moon, the 
people would have access to water.
  Importantly, though, they would also have access to oxygen. Because 
we can use the sun's solar rays to generate electricity to split water 
to form oxygen and hydrogen. Water, again, is H2O, two parts hydrogen, 
one part oxygen. So we could generate the oxygen needed for the people 
to breathe and we could create an atmosphere.
  Another very important thing is we can take that oxygen and hydrogen 
and use it as rocket fuel. Indeed, hydrogen and oxygen is the primary 
fuel used on our Nation's Space Shuttle when it rockets off into space. 
So this is a tremendous breakthrough. And I applaud the team at Ames 
Research Center and Allen Bender and all of the researchers who were 
involved, especially the people at Spaceport Florida, in getting this 
probe into orbit.

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