On the recordJune 30, 2011
I appreciate so much the words of the Senator from Florida because, of course, he is not mentioning the great leadership he has portrayed. He is today the only Member of the Senate who has actually gone into space as an astronaut, and his love for and zeal for our space exploration is unsurpassed, and I appreciated working with him. It was our joint bill that passed last year that assures a way forward for NASA; that assures that there will be manned space exploration; that we will use the space station, in which we have invested hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars, for not only health benefits for our country but also learning about dark energy. The dark energy and antimatter research that is being done right now, I witnessed myself last week when I visited the NASA facility at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX. We are now getting information on the cosmic rays that are coming into the spectrometer that has just been put on the space station by CDR Mark Kelly and his crew during the most recent shuttle mission, and we are going to possibly learn the genesis of the universe by this facility that was put aboard the space station and the research that is going to be done on dark matter and what happens when it meets matter.…
