The Mars Society's international University Rover Challenge (URC) is about to commence its 4th year of operations.

URC seeks the best and brightest college teams to design and build the next generation of Mars rovers for a competition at the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) in southern Utah.

Teams and their rovers will compete in four events:

• Equipment Servicing Task: A new task for 2010, teams will tele-operate their rovers to perform numerous dexterous operations to service an equipment panel
• Site Survey Task: Rovers will search for, and survey the coordinates of, several remote markers in the field
• Emergency Navigation Task: Rovers will race against the clock in search of a distressed astronaut who is lost and disabled in the field
• Sample Return Task: Also new for 2010, rovers will search in the field for evidence of extremophiles, and will have to take and return a sample.

Full details on this progrssive, exciting initiative, open to international participation, can be found on the URC competition pages.

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