[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 17]
[House]
[Page 22969]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                           WATER ON THE MOON

  (Mr. OLSON asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. OLSON. Mr. Speaker, this past spring on one of my visits to the 
Johnson Space Center, I visited the facility where they house the lunar 
samples that we collected during the Apollo missions to the Moon. At 
that time, we had every reason to believe that the Moon was as dry as 
west Texas. But it turns out that is not the case. Three different 
spacecraft have confirmed unambiguous evidence that there is, in fact, 
water on the Moon. These are not pools or rivers or oceans like we 
know, but there are water molecules present.
  Two robot probes in the nineties, Clementine and Lunar Prospector, 
suggested that water ice is present in the cold, dark areas of the 
poles. Now we find that water is much more pervasive. Water is 
essential for our astronauts when Americans return to the Moon, just 
like it was for our Founding forebearers Lewis and Clark when they 
immigrated west through the United States. Too many Americans closed 
the book on the Moon with our final Apollo mission in 1972. This 
finding tells us what we did know and, more importantly, what we don't 
know. There are still some things we don't know.
  Our Nation needs to understand that it was the Apollo program that 
ended in 1972, not lunar exploration. This discovery proves that, in 
this regard, we have only just begun.

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