The extremophile search task, which was designed to test the rovers' ability to find bacteria living in conditions not normally conducive to life, took place at a site selected for its history of interesting organisms. Teams were given a briefing by the judges, then had 45 minutes to conduct their search, followed by a 45-minute period where they could analyze their results and brief the judges on their findings. Scores, which are still being compiled, will be based not only on the rovers' actual findings, but on the teams' ability to interpret the results of those searches and present them in a coherent fashion to the judges.

This year's construction task required teams to navigate to a panel approximately 50 meters from a base station and then screw in a series of bolts. Teams had to do so via remote operation, relying only on the cameras on board their rovers and the instruments in their remote control center (a full explanation of the scoring system, along with an overview of the panel itself, can be viewed here). York University, which came in third place overall in the 2008 URC, put on an amazing performance in this task, managing to screw in all eight bolts on one side of the panel and touch three bolts on the other side, which gave them a score of 58 of 100 possible points. BYU, which had to overcome a dropped tip on their rover's arm, persisted long enough to score a second-place 24 points; University of Nevada, Reno came in third with 12 points; and returning champions Oregon State University finished fourth with 9 points. Georgia Tech, who experienced difficulties communicating with their rover, and UCLA, who blew a power supply, both finished with no points for the task.

Meanwhile, entrants from Warsaw University of Technology had to wait on the sidelines today, due to the delayed arrival of their rover from their native Poland to the competition site. Luckily, their rover arrived at 9:30 p.m. local time today, and judges will be working to allow them to participate in as many events as possible tomorrow.

For more details and media regarding today's events, visit the URC home page.