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[ silence--NASA Planetary Science open ]

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[ jazz music ]

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with the SAM team, and we're looking at the Mars--the

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SAM Mars chamber. SAM is on the Curiosity rover, and it's

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a suite of three instruments--and it has the ability to

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look for potential suitability for ever having

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past signs of life on the Martian surface. The chamber was

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built to simulate the environment that the SAM instrument will experience

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on the Martian surface. We need the Mars chamber on Earth so that we

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can operate the SAM testbed and run all the experiment sequences

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that we hope to run on the Martian surface. We're simulating extreme

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cold surface temperatures--Mars is much colder than Earth so we can

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expect to experience temperatures as cold as minus 120 degrees

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Celsius and as, y'know, warm as a cool

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summer day--around 20 degrees C. So, unlike your standard

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environmental test chamber or thermal vacuum chamber, this chamber

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is capable of actually operating in an atmosphere,

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so we can simulate the thin Martian carbon dioxide

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atmosphere. I like working on the chamber, but what's really,

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really great is the instrument that sits in the chamber. And I work with

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a fabulous team of people, so every day, we have new challenges,

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and that's the best part about working on the SAM chamber.

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[ music, beeping ]

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[ music, beeping fades ]