Today I gained a new appreciation for all the tasks that astronauts have to do on orbit that involve setting up, performing, or taking care of experiments or equipment for other researchers. Though the astronauts have been trained in several tasks and probably know them backwards and forwards, I'm sure for some tasks they still need to use the manual as a refresher and reminder. Here on "Mars", Bill and I have spent the last two days following an instruction manual to guide us in setting up beacons, cameras, and audio equipment that will track our locations and record our conversation. We have experience using the equipment from last year's rotation, but this year we are the ones that are responsible for setting it up. We have been provided with a very detailed manual with nice color photos to show us what needs to be done.

While following the steps, we begin to notice that some information that is left out because it is assumed or implied. These have been few, but can still cause delay in proceeding to the next step while we communicate back to "Earth" to clarify our question or confusion. Sometimes, a little tweaking of the setup must be done to accommodate the user, for instance we setup the base station computer in a different location than it was last year to provide easier access. Overall I have found this task to be a nice exercise in learning to implement someone else's experiment and I have gained an appreciation for the number of different experiments that astronauts on Station and Shuttle have to work with, as well as missions to the Moon and beyond.