(From my inbox.)

Dear RST and OPS,
We have made an important change for tomorrow's and the rest of the week's schedule. PLEASE MAKE SURE YOU CHECK THE SCHEDULE ON THE WEB!! The change actually impacts the morning RST SOWG meeting. Due to severe warm weather predictions, this morning we decided to start our day earlier so that we do NOT get stuck doing the EVA's during the warmest part of the day. We are concerned that ambient temperature will be to high and it could damage our systems. We will be starting our morning briefing at 8am. This means that the Crew Review of the RST Brief needs to start at 7am (all local MDT time). Currently, the RST SOWG meeting doesn't end until 7:30, and thus this means that your comments will come in too late for the crew to adjust their EVA plan. I leave it up to Shannon to decide what to do. Please let me know ASAP what you decide to do.

Doei ... MXS

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Hi, Maarten and everyone-- Understood about the EVA time change. It can get very hot out there. This means we will need to hold our SOWG Meetings from 5 am - 7 am MDT, one hour earlier than last week. Not really a problem. We were trying to keep our meetings to just two hours last week and get the feedback to the crew by 7 am, but that is a huge challenge, one that this week we will have to meet. The only real problem I see in that it only gives us one hour to see the meeting replay, since it only becomes available at 4 am MDT (am I correct about this?). If it is available earlier, I think we should plan to start the SOWG Meeting a half hour earlier (from 4:30 am to 6:30 am MDT) just to be certain we finish in time to allow Simon and Al to send everything to the crew. I think I need four watches like a MER team member, one for San Diego, MDRS, Buffalo and UK time! So in summary, if the meeting replay is available before 4 am MDT, I would like to hold the SOWG Meeting from 4:30 am to 6:30 am MDT. Can anyone confirm what time the meeting reply is ready? Thanks so much. Stacy, you and I can just start sleeping again next week!

Best,
Shannon

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Dear RST and OPS
Shannon might have told you already, but the schedule for tomorrow's EVA has changed again. We will NOT be starting early with the EVA, instead we will be starting really late, i.e. in the afternoon. I don't want to go into detail about why, but suffice it to say that we had not enough time today to setup the wireless network from Lith to the hab, thus this has to be completed in the morning. However, we did have a great day of Way Pointing at Lith for all EVAs for the next couple of days, and the crew had a great planning meeting for Segment 1, which you can find on SO and in the Meeting Replay videos I am downlinking as I am writing this. If everything works we will have an unbelievable EVA tomorrow, although it will be late in the day and I am not sure if the crew will have time to do an analysis in the hab and then a planning meeting all in one day. I have no idea what this will mean, but it might mean we will have to stagger the EVA analysis review and planning for next day EVA. It is becoming more than clear that our schedule is always too optimistic, and we continuously have to redo it. A good lesson for next year ;-) We are looking forward to your briefing tomorrow morning. We should have enough time to review it and create our final plan. We created a map of the location in PowerPoint. It is in the Compendium Crew Planning map. This will give you a good overview of where we are and what we want to do. I think it is crucial to watch the Meeting Replay, since that gives an explanation of Lith Canyon and our plan. Without watching that you might not get much out of our Compendium map. Note that we have taken a different approach this time, i.e. not do everything in Compendium, but do a Meeting Video Capture for a Meeting Replay. The crew really likes this, since we can explain maps like this.

Doei ... MXS

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Hello, RST-- Due to the change of plans at the Hab, we will have the SOWG Meeting at its regular time -- 6 am MDT, or 5 am PDT. Please view the meeting replay prior to the meeting, but there is no need for a preliminary analysis. We will do our analysis at the meeting, and work through the crew's Compendium map based on the meeting replay. I'm looking forward to it. See you in the morning!

Best,
Shannon

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I can't access these videos, Maarten. I've tried various combinations and typos, but no joy. Can you check the permissions on the files? Until I can get hold of the video files, no meeting replay :(.

Danius

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Hi all
As discussed at last RST SOWG, here is the 'portal map' you need for this meeting. The idea is that it has distilled from the email torrent just the elements you need to prepare for this meeting, including the web export of what Maarten circulated, plus any briefing notes from Shannon, and the links to WebEx and the Meeting Replay. Interested in your feedback on how we can improve this aspect. Note that at present, So'ton have been unable to access the video files from Maarten :-( so no replay yet... Simon

(End of emails.)

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So I rolled out of bed at 3:45 am and there was the news: for some reason, our team members in the UK had been unable to access the video for the meeting replay. Since the crew had done their Compendium map to compliment the video, this was not good news. On the bright side, Simon had created the Portal Map, a web-accessible summary of the main Compendium data, so that instead of downloading them, then importing them, then finding our way around Compendium in the middle of the night (some of us are better at Compendium than others), we could just click on the link and get the information we needed. I can't tell you how excited I was about this. I was cruising around looking at the map, amazed at the ease with which I could view the data, when I realized that I could go back to bed for 45 minutes. So I did.

At 5 am, I got up again and dialed into our telecom number. Melissa, Stacy and Simon were already online. We discussed what to do, since we didn't have a Meeting Replay, and decided that, since we were all assembled, we should give the crew's Compendium map a go, even without the video. So we all tried to log into WebEx, and got nowhere. Stacy has been blocked from getting on WebEx all along, but today was bad for all of us. Only Melissa and I seemed to be able to sign in and stay in. Al joined us in the middle of all this chaos. Finally we just gave up, since we all had the Portal Map to access. We would just have to identify what part of the map we were talking about.

True to Maarten's prediction, there wasn't much we could do. We are getting pretty good at following Compendium mapping logic, but as Maarten had mentioned, for this Lithe Canyon Planning Meeting, they had relied heavily on the video to carry the crew's thought process. We did send the crew four small suggestions, none of which proved, once we viewed the Meeting Replay, to have been very valuable.

The plan was that once the Meeting Replay was finished, we would view it independently and provide our feedback to the RST via email, which I would then compile and send to the Hab later in the day. Stacy finished her review first, late in the morning, and I, after experiencing some strange problems with viewing the Meeting Replay, finished later tonight. We heard nothing from the Buffalo team. I sent the suggestions to the crew at a little after 11 pm.

It was very exciting to watch the Meeting Replay. The crew began by outlining the Lithe Canyon EVA plans, with aerial maps which they annotated as they went along. They summarized the three segments of the EVA, and pointed out possible areas of interest at Lithe. After the plan summary, they worked through what actions they would take in Segment 1, which included using Stacy's stratigraphy methodology. The crew took great care to include the RST in their planning by identifying ways they could collect data so that we would have a greater contextual understanding of what they were looking at. It was, for me, very rewarding, but I was also concerned about making more work for them, so in my feedback I asked a few questions about how much of an effort it was to include the RST's needs in their planning. This is important; because the RST's ultimate goal is to support the crew, not make things harder for them.

Tomorrow, if the weather cooperates, the crew will begin their Segment 1 EVA at 8:15 am. I am looking forward to what they discover out there.