{"id":1360,"date":"2025-11-18T20:16:52","date_gmt":"2025-11-18T19:16:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sophia.estec.esa.int\/gtoc_portal\/?page_id=1360"},"modified":"2025-11-26T13:44:14","modified_gmt":"2025-11-26T12:44:14","slug":"gtoc-13-the-altaira-system","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sophia.estec.esa.int\/gtoc_portal\/?page_id=1360","title":{"rendered":"GTOC 13 – The Altaira System"},"content":{"rendered":"
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This edition was organised by Gregory Whiffen, Mark Wallace, Damon Landau, Etienne Pellegrini, Gregory Lantoine, Anastassios Petropoulos, Sungmoon Choi, Brian Anderson, Zubin Olikara, Jon Sims of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Outer Planets Mission Analysis Group. The official competition web site can be found here<\/a>. The problem was released on the 20th of October 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Peek at the final leaderboard<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a nutshell<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

The theme of GTOC13 was \u201cThe Altaira System\u201d \u2014 humanity\u2019s first robotic exploration of a fictional exoplanetary system designed by JPL. Centered around Altaira, a star slightly brighter and more massive than the Sun, the system features multiple habitable-zone planets and others with no solar system analogues, including the hot Jupiter Vulcan. The challenge envisioned a 200-year solar-sailing mission to explore and map the system\u2019s diverse worlds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The files sent by JPL to describe the problem are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  1. Problem statement<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  2. Problem data: comets.csv<\/a>, asteroids.csv<\/a>, planets.csv<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n
  3. Submission format<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n

    The winners<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

    Led by Fanghua Jiang<\/strong> and Hexi Baoyin<\/strong>, together with their team Jialong Song, Yuming Tao, Rundao Li, Yi Zhou, Yiyang Qin, Kinthong Lee, Yixuan Wu, Nan Zhang, the THU-LAD team from Tsinghua University\u2019s School of Aerospace Engineering won the competition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The Workshop<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

    TBA, questions may be addressed to\u202fgtoc13@jpl.nasa.gov<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    The solutions<\/h4>\n\n\n\n

    You can have a peak to the various solutions submitted from JPL website<\/a> … soon some more analysis will be also posted here.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    In the meantime enjoy this visual representation of the #2 solution from ESA’s ACT<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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