  While innovations in scientific instrumentation have pushed the boundaries of
Mars rover mission capabilities, the increase in data complexity has pressured
Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) and future Mars rover operations staff to quickly
analyze complex data sets to meet progressively shorter tactical and strategic
planning timelines. MSLWEB is an internal data tracking tool used by operations
staff to perform first pass analysis on MSL image sequences, a series of
products taken by the Mast camera, Mastcam. Mastcam's multiband multispectral
image sequences require more complex analysis compared to standard 3-band RGB
images. Typically, these are analyzed using traditional methods to identify
unique features within the sequence. Given the short time frame of tactical
planning in which downlinked images might need to be analyzed (within 5-10
hours before the next uplink), there exists a need to triage analysis time to
focus on the most important sequences and parts of a sequence. We address this
need by creating products for MSLWEB that use novelty detection to help
operations staff identify unusual data that might be diagnostic of new or
atypical compositions or mineralogies detected within an imaging scene. This
was achieved in two ways: 1) by creating products for each sequence to identify
novel regions in the image, and 2) by assigning multispectral sequences a
sortable novelty score. These new products provide colorized heat maps of
inferred novelty that operations staff can use to rapidly review downlinked
data and focus their efforts on analyzing potentially new kinds of diagnostic
multispectral signatures. This approach has the potential to guide scientists
to new discoveries by quickly drawing their attention to often subtle
variations not detectable with simple color composites.
