Astronaut Buzz Aldrin is pictured during the Apollo 11 extravehicular activity on the moon deploying the Early Apollo Scientific Experiments Package. In the foreground is the Passive Seismic Experiment Package; beyond it is the Laser Ranging Retro-Reflector (LR-3).

The House of Representatives passed legislation Dec. 16 to protect Apollo-era artifacts on the moon and to rename another NASA facility after the first man to walk on the moon.

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Jeff Foust has more than a decade of experience writing about space policy, entrepreneurial ventures and regulatory affairs. In 2001, he established spacetoday.net to aggregate and summarize the day's space-related news stories. In 2003, he started The...