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The Control Room

Inside the dark Jason control room, video screens display real-time images of the seafloor sent from the vehicle’s high-definition cameras to a pilot (foreground) who controls the vehicle with a joystick. Other screens give the pilot and observers information about navigation and depth, along with data from sensors on Jason. On this expedition on the research vessel Atlantis in early 2014, scientists investigated the largely unknown biochemical reactions performed by deep-sea microbes under extreme conditions at seafloor hydrothermal vents. These chemosynthetic microbes sustain lush communities of organisms and could be similar to some of the earliest life forms on Earth.(Photo by David Levin, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution)