[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 161 (2015), Part 8]
[House]
[Page 11777]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1315
                 HONORING THE ``NEW HORIZONS'' MISSION

  (Mr. DOLD asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. DOLD. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to celebrate NASA's New Horizons 
mission. Yesterday, after traveling more than 3 billion miles, the New 
Horizons probe passed just 7,800 miles from the surface of Pluto.
  Pluto was discovered in 1930 by a 24-year-old astronomer from my home 
State of Illinois. In 2006, NASA launched New Horizons in an effort to 
learn more about Pluto, the Kuiper belt, and the formation of our solar 
system. Yesterday, New Horizons sent us back our first closeup pictures 
of Pluto's surface.
  Mr. Speaker, the New Horizons mission is a great success for NASA. 
Not only will we learn great things about our solar system, but I hope 
that these pictures will serve to inspire a new generation of 
astronomers and physicists.
  America's future relies on a strong and robust program of science, 
technology, engineering, and math education, or STEM, and I hope that 
the success of this mission will encourage more students to follow that 
path.

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