[Congressional Record Volume 155, Number 46 (Tuesday, March 17, 2009)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Pages E689-E690]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




     RECOGNIZING AND COMMENDING THE NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE 
ADMINISTRATION (NASA), THE JET PROPULSION LABORATORY (JPL), AND CORNELL 
 UNIVERSITY FOR THE SUCCESS OF THE MARS EXPLORATION ROVERS, SPIRIT AND 
 OPPORTUNITY, ON THE 5TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE ROVERS' SUCCESSFUL LANDING

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                            HON. KEN CALVERT

                             of california

                    in the house of representatives

                        Tuesday, March 17, 2009

  Mr. CALVERT. Madam Speaker, just over 5 years ago, two engineering 
marvels--the Mars

[[Page E690]]

Exploration Rovers Spirit and Opportunity--captured the imagination of 
the American public and the world when they landed on Mars to begin a 3 
month-long NASA mission. The mission objective was to search for signs 
that water may have been present for long periods of time--signs that 
could tell us whether the Red Planet had been hospitable to life in the 
past. Within the first several months of the Mars mission, the NASA Web 
site experienced over a billion site visits. The Mars Exploration 
Rovers have been a wildly successful mission, with more than 13 miles 
of harsh Martian terrain traversed and over a quarter million awe-
inspiring images from the Martian surface captured, in addition to many 
thousands of scientific spectra that lends to our study of Mars.
  Spirit and Opportunity have made many important discoveries over the 
last 5 years. One of the most significant discoveries was evidence of 
water and geological information that supports an understanding that 
ancient Martian environments included periods of wet, possibly 
habitable conditions.
  I wholeheartedly support H. Res. 67, the resolution offered by my 
friends and colleagues from southern California, Mr. Schiff and Mr. 
Dreier to honor NASA, their team from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, 
and Cornell University on 5 years of great engineering and scientific 
discovery.

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