[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 6]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 7685]
[From the U.S. 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 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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