This edition was organised by Bertrand Regis of the Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales. The problem statement was released to the community on the 2nd of March 2009.
In a nutshell
A spacecraft has to visit as many Near Earth Asteroids as possible by performing fast consecutive fly-bys to finally randezvous with a NEA. The objective function is the number of asteroid visited. Secondary performance indices, to break ties, are the final spacecraft mass and total time of flight.
- List of registered teams
- Problem statement
- Problem data
- Requested output file format
- Final rankings
- Summary of the results
- Original Web site (from the web archives)
- Announecment on ESA portal
- Group Picture
The Winners
Led by Ilia S. Grigoriev, this edition was won by the team from Moscow State University with a trajectory visiting 44 asteroids in less than ten years.
Curiosities
Scientists would not agree, before this edition of GTOC, on how many asteroids could be encountered during a low-thrust interplanetary mission. The number 44 (in 10 years) appeared to scientific community as a positive surprise.
The second ranked trajectory, from the Aerospace Corporation, also visited 44 asteroid but had its secondary objective (mass) lower.