{"id":814,"date":"2017-05-01T17:59:01","date_gmt":"2017-05-01T16:59:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sophia.estec.esa.int\/gtoc_portal\/?page_id=814"},"modified":"2025-11-22T14:17:16","modified_gmt":"2025-11-22T13:17:16","slug":"gtoc-9-the-kessler-run","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/sophia.estec.esa.int\/gtoc_portal\/?page_id=814","title":{"rendered":"GTOC 9 &#8211; The Kessler Run"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignright\"><a href=\"http:\/\/sophia.estec.esa.int\/gtoc_portal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/index.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"200\" height=\"180\" src=\"http:\/\/sophia.estec.esa.int\/gtoc_portal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/11\/index.png\" alt=\"Logo of the advanced Concepts Team\" class=\"wp-image-425\"\/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>This edition was organised by <strong>Dario Izzo<\/strong> of the European Space Agency&#8217;s Advanced Concepts Team. The announcement was officially made on the 1st of April 2017, and can be found&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/groups.google.com\/forum\/#!topic\/gtoc_competition\/TTCEyCw8t1E\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Peek at the <a href=\"https:\/\/sophia.estec.esa.int\/gtoc_portal\/?p=1455\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"1455\">final leaderboard<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h5 class=\"wp-block-heading\">In a Nutshell<\/h5>\n\n\n\n<p>The theme chosen for this competition was active space debris removal and the competition was named &#8220;The Kessler Run&#8221; with an obvious reference to the Star Wars analogue &#8220;The Kessel Run&#8221;. It is imagined that in&nbsp;the year 2060 a serious&nbsp;explosion triggered the <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Kessler_syndrome\">Kessler effect c<\/a>ompromising the Sun-synchronous orbital environment. Fortunately, not all is lost, as scientists isolate a set of 123 orbiting debris pieces that, if removed, would&nbsp;allow&nbsp;to restore the orbital environment functionalities. Multiple missions have to be designed that cumulatively remove all the debris pieces. Each mission cost depends on the spacecraft mass and a base increasing cost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-16-9 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"The Kessler Run: visualization of the debris cloud\" width=\"660\" height=\"371\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/zvxZx-QnqQ0?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>The files sent by ESA&nbsp;to describe the problem are:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/sophia.estec.esa.int\/gtoc_portal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/gtoc9_registered.pdf\">List of registered teams<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/sophia.estec.esa.int\/gtoc_portal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/gtoc9_problem_stmt.pdf\">Problem statement<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Problem data:&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/sophia.estec.esa.int\/gtoc_portal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/gtoc9_debris.csv\">Debris orbits<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Example submissions&nbsp;&#8211; <a href=\"http:\/\/sophia.estec.esa.int\/gtoc_portal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/gtoc9_example1.txt\">Example1<\/a>,&nbsp;<a href=\"http:\/\/sophia.estec.esa.int\/gtoc_portal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/gtoc9_example2.txt\">Example2<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/sophia.estec.esa.int\/gtoc_portal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/gtoc9_rankings.pdf\">Final Rankings<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<h5 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Winners<\/h5>\n\n\n\n<p>Led by Anastassios Petropoulos and Daniel Grebow, the team from Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) won this edition. For the first time the same team gets the fourth&nbsp;victory in a GTOC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h5 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The&nbsp;Acta Futura Special Issue<\/h5>\n\n\n\n<p>A <a style=\"outline-width: 0px !important; user-select: auto !important;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.esa.int\/gsp\/ACT\/acta_futura\/issue11\/\">special issue of the Acta Futura Journal<\/a> contains peer-reviewed contributions from the various teams.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h5 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The&nbsp;Workshop<\/h5>\n\n\n\n<p>The GTOC9 workshop was&nbsp;held in Japan, as a special session of&nbsp;the 31st ISTS, 26th ISSFD &amp; 8th NSAT Joint Conference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>GTOC9 special session at ISSFD\/ISTS: <a href=\"http:\/\/sophia.estec.esa.int\/gtoc_portal\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/05\/gtoc9_sessioninfo.pdf\">programme<\/a><\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>GTOC9 special session at ISSFD\/ISTS :<a href=\"https:\/\/sophia.estec.esa.int\/gtoc_portal\/?page_id=847\">proceedings<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n\n\n\n<h5 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Curiosities<\/h5>\n\n\n\n<p>The competition theme and title &#8220;The Kessler run&#8221; is a citation of the famous Han Solo quote &#8220;The Millennium Falcon &#8230; its the ship that made the Kessel run in less than 12 parsec&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>To honour the quote, ESA tuned the parameters so that it would be difficult or anyway not convenient to do the Kessler run in less than 12 submissions. Nevertheless: &#8220;JPL &#8230; its&nbsp;the team&nbsp;that made the Kessler Run in less than&nbsp;12 &#8230; submissions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Several new&nbsp;solutions were found after the competition deadline from XSCC, NUDT and other teams&nbsp;and scoring less than 720MEUR. The JPL team found a J=711 solution that was briefly&nbsp;presented at the workshop.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The number of registered teams as well as the number of entries in the final rankings were the highest in the GTOC history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This edition was organised by Dario Izzo of the European Space Agency&#8217;s Advanced Concepts Team. The announcement was officially made on the 1st of April 2017, and can be found&nbsp;here. Peek at the final leaderboard. In a Nutshell The theme chosen for this competition was active space debris removal and the competition was named &#8220;The &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/sophia.estec.esa.int\/gtoc_portal\/?page_id=814\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">GTOC 9 &#8211; The Kessler Run<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-814","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sophia.estec.esa.int\/gtoc_portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/814","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sophia.estec.esa.int\/gtoc_portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sophia.estec.esa.int\/gtoc_portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sophia.estec.esa.int\/gtoc_portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sophia.estec.esa.int\/gtoc_portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=814"}],"version-history":[{"count":32,"href":"https:\/\/sophia.estec.esa.int\/gtoc_portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/814\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1457,"href":"https:\/\/sophia.estec.esa.int\/gtoc_portal\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/pages\/814\/revisions\/1457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sophia.estec.esa.int\/gtoc_portal\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=814"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}