Could NASA’s MOXIE Help Astronauts Breathe on Mars?

MOXIE engineer Asad Aboobaker of JPL explains how the instrument works in this video interview.

Transcript:

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[Music]
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hi
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I'm Raquel Villanueva with the news team.
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Here at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California
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now right now there is an exciting project happening
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right here that could one day help astronauts breathe
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on another planet as we get ready to go
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back to the moon and eventually mars so that's why i'm
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here with Asad Aboobaker, he is the system engineer
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for an experiment called moxie now
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moxie's going to be on the next Mars rover
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and it's going to help create or it's
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going to try to create
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oxygen on mars so i have plenty of
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questions if you have questions
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please put them in the comments starting right now
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so first off tell us where we are we are
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in the JPL insitu development lab and isru
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is an acronym that stands for in-situ resource utilization
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and that means being able to use the
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resources available to you
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at the location that you're going to
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rather than having to bring all of the
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uh raw materials with you yourself so uh
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it makes it so that you don't have to uh
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launch as much stuff you can just go and
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live off the land so to speak so what exactly is moxie?
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Moxie is is an oxygen plant and Moxie
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stands for the Mars
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oxygen isru experiment and so what we're doing
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is we're demonstrating technologies that
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would be used to generate oxygen on the surface of
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mars uh on the next mars roving mission so you're saying it
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was an acronym before yes yeah
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so so is it like an acronym
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acronym within an acronym we've got that
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isru in the middle of the moxie acronym
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which is a little recursive for those
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fans of the persian out there okay that
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is a lot to remember I'm very impressed
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so can you explain to us how moxie works
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Sure
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Yeah, Moxie basically has inside it
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a pump that draws in gas this is uh
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the inlet tube draws in gas here it goes
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inside and we can take a look inside our
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model a little bit later
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into the pump which compresses it and
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delivers it to our electrolysis system
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the electrolysis system operates at 800 degrees celsius
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and it is responsible for doing the
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electrochemistry which reacts the Co2
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with a catalyst and generates oxygen and
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separates it out from the co2 gas stream
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and then runs it through some sensors
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and dumps it outside the rover so last time i saw it, it was in
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this kind of bell jar glass dome that's right
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what is that for that is because Mars
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has a very different atmosphere than
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earth so
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we can't simulate the operation of Mars effectively
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in an earth's atmosphere environment so
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we put a glass bell drawn here to make
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it a vacuum system so that we can put in
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a mars-like atmosphere that's about 100
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the density of earth's and mostly Co2
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and the second thing i noticed was all
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the bling is that actual gold
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it is in fact actually gold.
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Gold is a very efficient reflector
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of infrared heat and because we have
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this very hot electrolysis system inside
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we wanted to make sure that we didn't radiate heat
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onto any of the other things around us
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within the rover and so we plated it
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gold to make sure that we didn't cause any negative
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effects on anything around us so how hot does it get
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the inside gets to 800 degrees celsius
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and that's where the electrochemistry happens but
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we have a really good installation
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system around that so that the outside
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doesn't get very wrong
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and are you i heard before you might be
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running some tests on that.
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Yeah, what are you doing right now that's
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right today we've been just running some
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additional tests just to make sure we
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understand completely how we're going to operate the instrument
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on mars and it makes cool sounds when it
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does it does make cool sounds although
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it's a little annoying so we're not going to run it right now i also want to
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know what it looks like on the inside well if you can come over
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here we have a model that shows what the different parts inside look
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like so this is basically the same as that in a plastic 3D printed version
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so this big chunk here
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that's this it would go here this is
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where all the electronics live
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this is that pump that I mentioned earlier so the inlet gas comes in here
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goes into this pump and then it gets
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delivered to this box here which is the electrolysis system
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and inside this elect this box is a bunch of insulation to keep all the
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heat in and an electrolysis stack that looks very
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much like this and so this is really the heart of moxie right here
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is it lightweight oh no it's not it's actually quite dense it's very
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yeah you can go ahead and pick it up oh
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Wow, yeah I did not expect it to be this
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heavy because it looks light when you first see it right
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Well, I'm very strong so that too
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How much oxygen is this making right now?
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None
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but on Mars it will be generating about six grams an hour of oxygen.
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Okay, and how much is that can humans survive on that?

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six grams an hour could probably keep a small dog alive
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if you wanted to keep a sleeping human
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alive it would probably be closer to 20 grams an hour of oxygen
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um and if you wanted to run a larger scale system that could
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you know do multiple humans it would
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have to be scaled up quite a bit
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so short-term plans it's going to be on the rover?
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Correct, so where is this going to live this sits inside the belly of the rover
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so in some ways it's a little isolated from the environment around us uh on mars uh but
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it does have a inlet filter that sits on the outside so
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that where we draw the gas in from so
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I mean, if I were a Mars rover would
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probably be somewhere around my river
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somewhere I don't know exactly I'm not
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I'm not a doctor I'm not that kind of doctor
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and then long-term goals for it would it
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have to be a lot bigger than
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this to work for humans absolutely yeah
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We would need basically something that scaled up
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from this by about a factor of 200 to make a useful
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system for future human exploration of
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Mars that's not just to generate oxygen for humans breathing but
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we don't just want to send people to Mars we also want to get them back and
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one of the most important elements of getting people back from
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Mars being able to get a rocket off the surface
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and oxygen is a very important component of rocket fuel
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and so a scaled-up version of moxie would
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generate also the oxidizer for use in
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the rockets to get off of the surface of Mars
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Why is it easier to make oxygen on Mars rather than
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just bring it up it really comes down to
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mass we could just based on what we've learned already
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from moxie scaling that moxie to a full
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human exploration scale would make weigh
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about a ton, whereas if we wanted to bring
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all that auction with us from earth we'd
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have to launch something like 200,000 tons of oxygen from earth very soon
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it's probably the same as this.

I'd also want to know, does this have a practical application one
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day on earth or could it one be it might not this not specifically in
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the way it's done on Moxie but uh the uh the technology can be used uh
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in a number of ways it's very flexible
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We just because the only thing we know we have available is Co2 on mars
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but on earth we have other things available like water and if you run
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water and Co2 through this sort of electrolysis system
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you can generate things that are precursors for
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uh useful things like fuels or plastics or things like that and so
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this might something like this might uh
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end up reducing our dependence on fossil fuels
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Moxie has a lot of potential right now
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absolutely what does it need to succeed
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on Mars what needs to happen
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we need to get there and we need some electricity
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and then we're good to go and are there any questions out here absolutely yes
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so on the topic of electricity they want to know how much power
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does it use that is a great question when we're at full tilt generating
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oxygen it takes about 260 watts of electrical power
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and so we run we generate oxygen for about two hours potentially and at that time
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by that point we basically drain the rover's batteries so they have to
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stop and they got to recharge so we're
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also getting asked could technology like this be used to reduce
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Co2 in earth's atmosphere?
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It depends on how you generate the electricity to run it so
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for example if you're using fossil fuels to generate the electricity to
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react with co2 then it doesn't help, but if you maybe if you have solar or
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wind then yes you could but then one of the outputs of this process is
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carbon monoxide so then you have to figure out what are you going to do
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with the waste product which is carbon monoxide it's industrially useful that
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you know there's probably if we were using this on on an earth scale
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it might have more carbon monoxide than we know what to do with right and we've
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also had a lot of people express interest in working at JPL and NASA.

how did you get where you are today?
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Oh, that's a great question well I should say that I studied
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really hard, but uh you know I don't
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[Laughter]
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No, I have a Ph.D. in physics and I was like studying hard um yeah it was
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at times and I've always been interested in space and i just happened to
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be able to get in contact with some people here that were looking for
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uh people to work on interesting problems and
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it just worked out i kind of want to know what's the most exciting part
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about working on Moxie being able to send something to Mars
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Is amazing. I know people at JPL do that all the time this is like
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old hat people send stuff to Mars here at JPL. For me this is very new so it's
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very exciting for me and also being able to do something
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that's really never been done before that
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is really an exciting opportunity for me.
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That's great. Well let's just leave it on one last side of moxie if you want to
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see more behind the scenes footage like this and talk to Asad
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again because he's super cool!
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Please follow all our social media channels at NASA JPL.
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Once again I bring you Moxie