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the international space station is

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world-class laboratory that is doing a

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lot of different kinds of science on

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orbit some of it is using the human crew

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members as a test subjects but some of

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it is a very different kind of science

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it's done as well

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for example there is a new experiment

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that arrived on the cygnus cargo vehicle

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last weekend that is has a goal of

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supporting future exploration by looking

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into the behavior

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of soils that is found on airless bodies

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in space and this morning we're going to

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learn more about that from dr mark

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freeze he is the

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uh

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a planetary scientist with the astro

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materials acquisition and curation

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office here at the johnson space center

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and the principal investigator of the

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experiment known as strato1

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uh tell me where did the idea for this

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experiment come from okay

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strata one is kind of the outgrowth of a

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long series of experiments uh there's a

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community of scientists interested in

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the behavior of regolith that's kind of

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like the soil on airless bodies there's

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this community of scientists are

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interested in the behavior and

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properties and characteristics of

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regolith on these bodies like

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for example the moon mercury comets

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asteroids and you know these scientists

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have been studying

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studying the behavior and properties of

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regolith since the apollo days it goes

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back to then

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there have actually been previous

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experiments to try to understand

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the behavior of regolith on small bodies

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see we have apollo samples we have

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samples of regolith from they were

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returned by apollo astronauts we have a

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pretty good understanding the way

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regolith behaves on the moon on larger

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bodies like that like moon and mercury

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where you have impacts that throw

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material up and it comes back down right

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um but on

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small bodies little small asteroids you

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have impacts that will just throw

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material clean off the body and these

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are and a lot of these are what's called

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rubble piles or they're loosely

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aggregated

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collections of material that's kind of

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free to flow and move as the bot as the

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asteroid orbits the sun so we don't know

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a whole lot about the way that regolith

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behaves on those bodies and that's

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that's that's the point of experiments

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like this do we have a reason to believe

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that it behaves differently than dirt

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here on earth yes uh dirt on earth is

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composed of the factors that produce

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dirt on earth you have

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living material you have a large amount

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of microbes and and you know dirt and

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plants and such or plants and roots and

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such there's all the minerals in there

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have been rounded off usually by some

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process uh weathering winds water that

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sort of thing and there's a lot of clays

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none of those things are true for

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regolith okay there's no weathering

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there's no overflowing water there's no

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living microbes and so what you what the

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regolith on these small bodies is

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composed of is more like uh impact

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gardened fragmented shocked shattered

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pieces of rock and they behave it it

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behaves very differently than material

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here on earth it's actually fairly

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difficult to study on earth for that

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reason so you're you've decided to study

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it in the weightless environment

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describe how the experiment operates

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what kind of control system do you have

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so that you can

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take out the chance factors and really

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find out how it behaves

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sure the uh

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the point of strata of the strata 1

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experiment is to test our current models

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of regolith on these bodies and and you

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know see where the discrepancies lie if

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if they if they're there at all

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strata is composed of has four tubes

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filled with regolith simulants on board

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and the reason why we have four is

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there's varying degrees of simplicity

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we've tried to break out the various

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factors that that go into the behavior

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of this material and separate them out

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so we can we can understand them one at

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a time there's the simplest model is

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just three different sizes of glass

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beads okay it's all spherical all of

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them are smooth all of them are the same

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material

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we go up a step in complexity to the

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next one which is

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three sizes of broken glass fragments so

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now we've got same material but angular

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fragments something more like you'd

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actually see in regolith and then the

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third one is crushed meteorite that's

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the stuff that

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the regolith on small bodies is actually

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composed of and you have angular

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fragments

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varying density because this stuff has

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metal and sulfides and other things in

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it and then the fourth is a carbonaceous

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chondrite to uh to support uh nasa

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emissions such as the osiris-rex mission

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which is going to go collect material

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from it from the regolith of a small

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carbon-rich body and do you just

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let it be and see how it reacts when

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there's no gravity to to work on it or

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are you doing something else to it

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it turns out the vibration environment

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on the international space station is

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fairly similar to what we'd expect to

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see on these small bodies you have the

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occasional thump you know

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in a kind of a low level background of

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movement

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previous experiments by university of

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central florida on short-lived parabolic

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flight short duration parabolic flight

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experiments have shown that we need to

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do this over do these types of

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experiments over spans of months and

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years to really understand the behavior

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of this material so what's going to

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happen is

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each of these tubes is the material has

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been sorted and it's held in place by a

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device we call the entrapulator and

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when the instrument is activated here

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shortly within next days or weeks the

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entrapulator will retract and allow the

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material to flow free and it's just

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going to be exposed to the ambient

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vibration environment on iss which will

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be carefully monitored with

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with the sams instrument package which

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is bolted to the front of

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strata one right now so we get the

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vibration data and we will watch the

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behavior of each of these materials

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there's a camera for each tube we're

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going to take pictures at a regular

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cadence and we'll have

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time lapse imagery basically over the

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course of a year and watch how this

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stuff sorts and move and rearranges

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itself under the under this vibration

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environment in uh in microgravity and

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then it comes back to earth we re-engage

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the entrapulator so nothing moves again

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bring it back to earth and we will core

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these things out carefully and look at

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the distribution of particles in terms

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of size and density where appropriate

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and compare the results to the existing

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models

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very interesting now this experiment is

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the product of a of a program here at

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the johnson space center that was

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designed to to get experiments to flight

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faster than what has has been the norm

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in the past how did that work out for

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you in getting strata 1 to fly yes it's

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called the 1e program

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historically getting to getting

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experiments to the space station has

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been a multi-year experiment

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experience strata one we got there there

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was strata one and several other 1e

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pathfinder experiments and we got strata

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one from concept to delivered hardware

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in 10 months so we took this all this

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all the scheduling all everything

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that had been set up for these longer

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duration development procedures and

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condensed it to 10 months it shook the

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system pretty pretty well

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but it didn't break um you know if it

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did then strata wouldn't be on iss right

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now we had a lot of good people helping

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who put in

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time after hours time on holidays and

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got this thing done had some good

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lessons learned of how to

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how to make this work seamlessly for

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future 1e experiments and i hope to see

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more 1e experiments as we go forward

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looking forward to see how