Please contact the URC Director if you have any questions.

[1.Q]  Do we have to analyze the soil at each site? Or can we do a sample return and analyze it back at HQ?

[1.A]  All data collection must be performed in situ.  The team may only analyze the raw data returned by the rover, not the soil itself.

[2.Q] Is there a possibility that a competition could be scheduled at night/early evening?

[2.A] All of the competition events will be held in full daylight.

[3.Q] Is there a cap on how many people we can have on the team?

[3.A] No, as long as all other applicable rules regarding team members are followed.

[4.Q] There's no paper aside from the financial report due at the end of the competition, right?

[4.A]  Aside from the financial report due at the beginning of competition, there are various specifications due May 1, as noted through the rules.  There is no formal abstract or paper due, though, for the competition. All teams are highly encouraged to submit abstracts for and present at the 12th Annual Mars Society Convention in Washington, DC. Teams who present have the opportunity to submit full papers to be published by the Mars Society's MarsPapers.

[5.Q] Are overamplified communications devices permitted?

[5.A] All communications devices used must adhear to FCC standards.  Any modified devices must be documented and submitted for approval alongside a statement of applicable FCC regulations.  Team members are permitted to obtain and utilize any relavent licenses, but must document the license, applicable regulations, and devices as part of the communications documentation deadline.

[6.Q] For the Construction Task, should we expect the possibility that the plane of the panel to be tilted negatively from the horizon?

[6.A] As specified in the rules: "The bolts will be placed between 15cm and 75cm above the ground, and may lie at inclinations of no more than 45° in either direction from the horizontal plane."  So, the short answer is yes.

[7.Q] For those tasks requiring high-resolution images, would a 640x480 image be of high enough resolution, or are you looking for 800x600 and above?

[7.A] There is no specific minimum resolution requirement.  The most important requirement with cameras is to obtain usable and useful images (i.e. a 1280x1024 image that is washed out and has almost no color depth is not as good as a 640x480 image that is perfectly focused, has good white balance, and is clear).  It should go without saying that assuming all other aspects of the images are constant, higher resolution is better; however resolution is just one aspect of a quality image.

[8.Q] For the remote science report due at the end of the Extremophile Search Tasks, do those need to be printed or is a soft copy on a disk or flash drive sufficient?

[8.A] A written report is actually not due for the two science tasks.  Instead, teams will be giving a field briefing to the judges - 15 minutes to present data of interest in any format deemed appropriate, and also to field questions from the judges.  The data used in the presentation can be on a laptop or monitor, or can be printed if the team supplies its own printer.  Teams will be judged on the effectiveness at presenting meaningful analysis over the course of those 15 minutes, and are not required to submit any hard documentation.

[9.Q] In the remote science documentation definition, it asks for a panorama with cardinal directions on the picture and some indication of scale. Scaling a panorama is not really useful because in the stitching process of combining pictures, the ranges are often distorted so that the image can fit the entire horizon. This creates a tunnel vision like phenomenon and scale is not very useful. Panoramas are used to get an entire horizon shot with the most information in them. Scale is used for high resolution imaging to locate or analyze a single subject.  Should teams be prepared to present some form of scale in our panorama?

[9.A] The wide-angle panorama is not required to be a 360 degree horizon image, and thus does not require image stitching (that is not to say that stitched images aren't allowed, or aren't useful in their own right).  The intent of the wide-angle image is to provide perspective of the sample location with respect to the local geography and other features of interest.  The requested scale indication should be applicable to the sample region, and does not need to be perfectly precise.  While a highly accurate scale is always desirable, the main intent of the scale in a wide-angle shot is to provide an order-of-magnitude level of spacial awareness (in the desert, without a known size reference, 100 meter features can easily appear to be close up shots of 10 meter features).