Social Tagging of Mission Data

Mars missions will generate a large amount of data in various forms, such as daily plans, images, and scientific information. Often, there is a semantic linkage between images that cannot be captured automatically. Software is needed that will provide a method for creating arbitrary tags for this mission data so that items with a similar tag can be related to each other. The tags should be visible and searchable for all users.

A new routine was written to offer a new and more flexible search option over previous applications. This software allows users of the MSLICE program to apply any number of arbitrary tags to a piece of mission data through a MSLICE search interface. The application of tags creates relationships between data that did not previously exist. These tags can be easily removed and changed, and contain enough flexibility to be specifically configured for any mission. This gives users the ability to quickly recall or draw attention to particular pieces of mission data, for example:

• Give a semantic and meaningful description to mission data; for example, tag all images with a rock in them with the tag “rock.”
• Rapidly recall specific and useful pieces of data; for example, tag a plan as “driving template.”
• Call specific data to a user’s attention; for example, tag a plan as “for:User.”

This software is part of the MSLICE release, which was written in Java. It will run on any current Windows, Macintosh, or Linux system.

This work was done by Jeffrey S. Norris, Michael N. Wallick, Joseph C. Joswig, Mark W. Powell, Recaredo J. Torres, David S. Mittman, Lucy Abramyan, Thomas M. Crockett, Khawaja S. Shams, and Jason M. Fox of Caltech; Guy Pyrzak of Ames Research Center; and Michael B. Vaughn of the University of Wisconsin-Madison for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. For more information, contact This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

This software is available for commercial licensing. Please contact Daniel Broderick of the California Institute of Technology at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . Refer to NPO-46827