GTOC Student Club Initiative

The Global Trajectory Optimization Competition is an event taking place every one-two years over roughly one month during which the best aerospace engineers and mathematicians world wide challenge themselves to solve a “nearly-impossible” problem of interplanetary trajectory design. The problem is released by the winning team of the previous edition who, also, is free to define entirely the competition rules. https://sophia.estec.esa.int/gtoc_portal/

The problem needs to be related to interplanetary trajectory design and its complexity high enough to ensure a clear competition winner. Over the years, the various problem statements and solutions returned, collected in this website, will form a formidable database of experiences, solutions and challenges for the scientific community.

A club for students interested in spacecraft trajectory design. One routine activity is to take part in GTOC and pursuing a best ranking. The aim also includes supporting CubeSat/rocket/airplane trajectory/path design, and can be further extended to

GTOC 13: The team from Jet Propulsion Laboratory has preliminary confirmed their interest to organize the 13th edition of GTOC (2025 tbc). Many winning participants are trajectory design teams from national space agencies worldwide or research teams with close collaboration with agencies.

The club shall prepare 1 to 2 teams to take part in GTOC 13. Considering the fact that the competition is difficult, professional, and at an advanced level, a practical goal for teams would be to submit feasible results successfully.

This document is just to offer an opportunity. The club will be run and organized by students. Initial members need to initiate and start the club at the University level.

(Opening) Student club leadership positions.

Students' roles and tasks: Choose a problem and finish a problem in one semester. Start a club to organize. Assign tasks to members. Submit presentations and papers.

(Opening) GTOC team leader and members: For both undergraduate and graduate students; 2 teams with 4–5 members each team.

Experienced graduate students are encouraged to join as potential team leaders for GTOC-13. Mentor undergraduate students.

Faculty advisors: Asst. Prof. Hao Peng, Asst. Prof. David Canales-Garcia, etc.

Advisors' roles: Meetings with students to monitor the development and directions. Provide computational resources. Provide conference room. Advisors are NOT in charge of the club. Club members should discuss with or seek advice from advisors on major challenges and issues.

Facilities: Remote access to ALPENGLOW Lab's computational facilities. Potential club space for discussion and meeting. Space and support from ALPENGLOW Lab and STAR Group during the competition.

• Local optimization theory and methods
• Global optimization methods
• Optimal control theory and methods
• AI/ML based methods
• Open-source implementations
• CPU and GPU parallel computing
• Flyby mission design
• Low-thrust mission design
• Practice using previous GTOC problems (see below for selected ones)
• Result visualization and rendering

• Topics with more materials on the internet; probably easier to start with
  • GTOC X – Settlers of the Galaxy (JPL organized; NUDT-XSCC won)
    • https://sophia.estec.esa.int/gtoc_portal/?page_id=980
    • Publications: GTOC X Special Session of the Astrodynamics Specialist Conference in Maine
  • GTOC 11 – Dyson sphere (NUDT-XSCC organized; Tsinghua won)
    • https://sophia.estec.esa.int/gtoc_portal/?page_id=782
    • All presentations can be downloaded here.
    • Most teams published a paper in the journal Journal Acta Astronautica detailing the results of the competition.
  • 2023, GTOC 12 – Asteroid Mining (Tsinghua University organized; JPL won)
    • https://sophia.estec.esa.int/gtoc_portal/?page_id=1261
    • JPL and Antipodes have been keeping updating the results after the competition deadline.
    • Asteroid exploration
  • 2014, GTOC 7 – Multi-spacecraft exploration of the asteroid belt (Università di Roma “Sapienza” organized; JPL won)
    • https://sophia.estec.esa.int/gtoc_portal/?page_id=515
    • Low-thrust engine
  • 2017, GTOC 9 – The Kessler Run (ACT organized; JPL won)
    • https://sophia.estec.esa.int/gtoc_portal/?page_id=814
    • This is about space debris and have full sets of publications and presentations.
• Relatively harder ones
  • GTOC 6 – Global mapping of galilean moons (JPL organized; Turin Polytechnic and “Sapienza” University of Rome won)
  • 2015, GTOC 8 – Very-Long-Baseline Interferometry (JPL organized; ACT won)
• Too old to find good references; can be used as practices later
  • GTOC 1 – Save the Earth
  • GTOC 2 – Multiple Asteroid Randezvous
  • GTOC 3 – Multiple Sample Return
  • GTOC 4 – Asteroids billiard
  • 2010, GTOC 5 – Penetrators (Lomonosov Moscow State University organized; JPL won)

Students of interest are encouraged to contact the faculty advisors listed in this document or talk with their advisors about this opportunity.

A maintained version of this document is available at this link: https://alpenglow.space/research/gtoc-club