Mars Chamber

In middle school I decided that I was going to create a chamber to replicate the Martian environment. To achieve a similar atmosphere to Mars I used a vacuum chamber. To get a Co2 atmosphere I put dry ice in the chamber then brought it down to vacuum. The dry ice sublimated giving me a Co2 atmosphere. For the soil I used Iron oxide that I mixed with a bunch of minerals present in Martian soil. Then I planted 3 succulents in the soil, I was quite interested in seeing how long they would last in the Marslike environment. I even made a watering mechanism out of a syringe that I would connect to the top of the container to give them the occasional watering. Within a month the succulents were dead. But that wasn't the interesting part, when I looked back on the chamber months later they had actually grown fungus in the hostile environment. Also over the course of years the atmosphere eventually grew to 50% Earth atmosphere my hypothesis is that this is attributed to minor leakage in the container. Overall it was a fun project to work on, but I will probably never open that biohazard.