There is an update to the rules specifying that CSEWI will now be providing the portion of the communications link that will generate the required delay. This change was made in order to create a more level playing field by ensuring that the monitoring of the communications link will be done in a consistent fashion for every team.

Here is a video with some interesting information about excavation systems that have been tested by NASA, and some of the things they are considering using them for. Featured is NASA's Rob Mueller, who has participated on our panel of judges for the Regolith Excavation Challenge every year since it's beginning in 2007.

The competition date has been moved to October 17-18, 2009. The possibility of changing the date was evaluated closely, and it was determined that overall, it would be better for all to change the date. One advantage of moving the competition date is that we now expect to make our sandbox available for testing prior to the competition date, something that has been requested for years. More details about this will be available in the next month. The team agreement and rules documents are in the process of being updated, and should be available early next week.

There seems to have been a technical difficulty resulting from a recent upgrade to the web site. Posting new topics and comments in the forum are going to be down until it is resolved.

Please note that the team agreement has been updated with new deadlines in order to give everybody more time to register. The updated documents are available at http://regolith.csewi.org/rulesandregistration.

The final rules have been posted to http://regolith.csewi.org/rulesandregistration

Just a quick note to let everybody know that we plan to open team registration either later today or on Monday. This will also come with the release of the final version of the rules. We decided to make a change to the final registration deadline so that teams would have as much time as possible to get registered and submit documentation.

We have updated http://regolith.csewi.org to a new platform and now have a forum and other new functionality.

Based on the questions and the inputs received in response to the previous draft, the draft rules have been updated. The file is here.

The changes are as follows:

• Communications link bandwidth limit of 1 Mbps is now required
• Communications link minimum delay has been increased to 2.0 seconds
• Excavation Hardware now starts with reference point at center of starting cell with the orientation decided by the team

The draft rules document is here. This document was prepared with input from NASA ISRU stakeholders, past competitors and other stakeholders. Among our goals is to make the rules as "user friendly" as possible, meaning that we hope they are easy to understand, clearly define the goal of the competition, and only push meaningful requirements to the teams so that the solution space is as large as possible while still driving solutions that are useful to NASA.

Plans are coming together well for the 2009 Regolith Excavation Challenge, and we are planning to hold the challenge event on the weekend of August 15, 2009. The rules will remain very similar to the 2008 competition, with the exception that we plan to allow teams to utilize telerobotic operations. In this case, the definition of telerobotic operations will include some of the limitations consistent with operating a robotic system on the lunar surface from a control station on the earth.

Just a quick note to let you know that another Regolith Excavation Challenge is expected later in 2009. In addition, California Space Authority is expected to continue as Co-Host of the event with the California Space Education and Workforce Institute. We still have a lot of details to be worked out, so stay tuned for more information in the next few weeks.

First post for the regolith excavation challenge in 2009.