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1. Today, NASA is looking to the deep sea to inform its search for life in space.
2. The deepest regions of the sea are called the hadal zone, after Hades, the Greek god of the underworld. The hadal zone is full of strange lifeforms, but it’s difficult to explore there because the pressure of the water above can be more than 5000 pounds per square inch! Building ships to withstand that kind of pressure is incredibly challenging.
3. Scientists hoping to explore the hadal zone face other challenges, too: communication with the surface is difficult, it’s dark, and vessels able to withstand the pressure tend to be small, leaving little room for passengers to move around.
4. Luckily, scientists have a new hope for exploring the ocean’s mysterious depths: Orpheus, a submersible robot. Researchers hope Orpheus will reveal more about what lives in the hadal zone and how those lifeforms survive in such unusual conditions. NASA has even partnered with Orpheus’s designers, in the hopes that understanding the strange life lurking below may help us better understand where to look for alien life in the skies above.
How does paragraph 4 connect to paragraphs 2 and 3?
