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this new rover will search for signs of

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ancient life test new technologies and

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gather rock samples which may someday

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become the first pieces of the Red

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Planet ever return to Earth for analysis

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today we are naming a spacecraft that

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will go to Mars and the name is when

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perseverance was first selected you know

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I wasn't sure about it to be honest

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when the pandemic struck the future was

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certainly unknown it was like walking

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into a blind dark alley you didn't know

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what was there what was in front of you

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what you were gonna have to deal with

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it's something that nobody expected it's

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something nobody could plan for rather

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than your first priority being mission

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success and and getting to the launch

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pad

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your first priority immediately gets

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displaced and it's now the safety of the

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people and it took a lot of work to put

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stuff together in order to keep momentum

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going to keep people working safely keep

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them healthy and to keep the project on

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schedule

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we called the effort Mars 2020 safe at

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work and the objective was to keep the

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team as safe or safer than they would be

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if they were not working you know

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putting a spacecraft together that's

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going to Mars and not making a mistake

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it's hard no matter what trying to do it

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during the middle of the pandemic it's

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it's a lot harder there's no doubt that

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working in isolation not virtual

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isolation but in physical isolation from

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everyone else is a challenge it's hard

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for me I have two young kids sometimes

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I'm not able to focus or listen probably

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as well as I would want to a lot of our

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work was occurring in a cleanroom

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anyways but that meant that even before

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we entered the cleanroom we had that

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find ways of ensuring that we were not

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putting ourselves or others at risk

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really doing something that's

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transformative and trying to understand

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whether or not life evolved on another

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planet that's the fundamental objective

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of this mission we are explorers our job

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is to go into the unknown and this is

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just another example

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the unknown how to make this job happen

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when you're doing it largely through a

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computer

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pretty much everybody that I've talked

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to that's associated with the mission

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has said the same thing which is you

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could not have come up with a better

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name than perseverance you know I'm a

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convert now I hear perseverance is the

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right name for the rover it's an amazing

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serendipity that we get to persevere

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through working on perseverance I think

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it now is it's a really important symbol

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of humanity hopefully persevering

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through this great challenging time that

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we have right now I asked the team a

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couple months ago if they would like to

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do something to kind of symbolize and

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mark these challenges that we faced and

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they designed something that we call a

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kovat nineteen perseverance plate that's

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now affixed to the port side of the

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rover it has some symbol a globe

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representing all of us that face this

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challenge together the spacecraft

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leaving the earth on its way to Mars and

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all of this supported by the now

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familiar staff and servant of the

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medical community on the front lines

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keeping us safe and we hope that this

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plate and we hope that this mission in