This edition was organised by Dario Izzo of the European Space Agency’s Advanced Concepts Team. The problem statement was released to the community on the 7th November 2005.
In a nutshell
An asteroid deflection mission is to be designed. A kinetic impactor equipped with low-thrust engines is to be sent to change the orbit of a target asteroid. The quantity to be optimised is related to the momentum transferred to the asteroid.
- List of registered teams
- Problem Statement
- Requested output file format
- Final rankings
- Original web site (contains all the submitted solutions and presentations)
The Winners
Led by Anastassios Petropoulos, the team from Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) won this edition with a trajectory using a Saturn fly-by to invert the orbit angular momentum and inject the spacecarft on an hyperbola intersecting the asteroid orbit on a head-on collision.
Curiosities
The second ranked trajectory from Deimos Space, a team led by Bello Mora, actually turned out to be able to achieve a higher fitness value, when reoptimized by the JPL team.
The winning trajectory from JPL is the trajectory depicted in the GTOC trophy.
The trajectory problem was inspired by the Don Quijote mission of the European Space Agency