No sooner do we ask for something than we get it! Or so it seems. Yesterday one of our main summary points to the crew was that we needed a way to associate data. For example, there needed to be a way to associate a voice note with an image. Today, there was a new command in the agents' software than allowed the crew to create those kinds of associations. And it works!

Here is an example:

Abby associated a particular location—Waypoint 6, Work Site 5—with a voice note and three samples. In the voice note, she described where each sample was taken and gave a brief description of each. She described one sample as being composed of a finer material at the base of a conglomerate, another as conglomerate at the top of the west cliff face and the third as being conglomerate from the east cliff face. She also notes that these last two samples were collected to look at our mission hypothesis that the west and east sides of Lith Canyon are part of the same unit, while the first was to look at our other hypothesis, that deposition in Lith is due to it being part of a wandering channel.

It was an excellent voice note, and it gave us a great deal of information, and better yet, it was information that allowed us to associate pieces of the data with each other. This is critical, because we need to begin our own analysis of the data before we get the crew's analysis. We also need to assume that due to time constraints, we may have to make our own analysis independent of the crew's analysis, which is exactly what happened at times during this rotation.

While Abby's voice note and the associations were the high point of today's data collection, there was still no way to associate the images, at least in the data as we received them. We were unable to determine if the photos for this voice note came from the images received during Abby's “walk to waypoint six” or if they are the images taken after the voice note and its associated samples.

One additional advantage to both the crew and the RST following the same photo documentation methodology is that even if one photo were associated with a given sample, we would be able to associate the remainder simply by following the methodology. Our suggestion would be to associate the local perspective photo, which puts the outcrop in the context of the canyon, because the RST could quickly follow the photos from the wider view down to the sample site using the methodology.

Another suggestion we had during this morning's SOWG Meeting was for the crew to take “Before” and “After” photos of a sample site. We had talked about this in our planning meetings prior to the rotation, because this is a methodology being followed by the MER team. We were undecided on whether this practice would have any practical value, or if it would just be additional data to view, but Melissa and Stacy pointed out that even if a sample site did not have a voice note, we would be able to associate the sample with the two images.

A lot of what the RST does with the data as it comes into us during an EVA is piece it together like a puzzle. Anything that the agents and crew can do to make it easier for us, while not being an additional burden for them, will help us in our ability to turn out quality analyses of the data within the tight time frame we have between one EVA and the next.