For the fourth time, the European Space Agency's Advanced Concepts Team (ACT) presents in cooperation with the The Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO) the Space Optimization Competition (SpOC). Look forward to challenging problems set in a futuristic space mission scenario.

SpOC 4: Space Logistics

SpOC 4 features three distinct challenges, each with its own flavor:

1. Luna Tomato Logistics

Design a transport network to maximize the delivery of precious tomatoes from Earth orbits to lunar destinations. Each transfer must respect strict licensing regulations, but be careful: no orbit or destination can be used more than once! For advanced competitors, you’ll need to compute the actual transfer trajectories and maximize the total mass delivered, taking into account the complexities of orbital mechanics and transfer capacities.

2. Keplerian Tomato Traveling Salesperson

Disaster! Tomatoes are stranded in lunar orbit after a cargo mishap. As a logistics expert, you must collect all the tomatoes in the shortest possible time, planning a route that respects the limits of your spacecraft’s maneuvering capability. This is a traveling salesperson problem with a twist: the cost of moving between tomatoes depends on Keplerian dynamics, and not all transfers are feasible. Optimize your route, timing, and maneuvers to save the Luna Tomato Industry!

3. Luna Tomato Advertising

Can you broadcast advertisement across the lunar sky? Configure a fleet of spacecraft in lunar orbits to reproduce a Morse-code advertising campaign, using occultations as dots and dashes. Your goal: use as few spacecraft as possible while keeping the signal crisp and clear. Choose from Distant Retrograde, Lyapunov, and Axial orbits, and optimize the phases to match the target waveform. Everybody must know that tomatoes are for sale.

Competition Structure

SpOC 4.0 contains three distinct problems centered around a futuristic space mission. Starting from 1 April 2026, End of Day, Anywhere on Earth (AoE) you have three months to tackle these challenges to secure a spot on the leaderboard, i.e., until 30 June 2026, End of Day, Anywhere on Earth (AoE).

Detailed technical descriptions for the three challenges to be solved will be made available on the Optimise platform from the same date.

Guidelines and Rules

The competition will be hosted on the Optimise platform developed by the Advanced Concepts Team. Participants will need to register online on the platform, and solution entries will need to be submitted via Optimise for validation. While SpOC is organized in cooperation with GECCO 2026, it is not required to attend GECCO 2026 in order to participate in SpOC.

• Your objective is to propose and implement metaheuristic algorithms to solve the proposed optimisation challenges.
• In order to validate your solutions, we will provide you with Python validation code for each of the challenges. This code includes problem definitions in the Pygmo user-defined problem (UDP) format, examples of solutions, and visualisation tools.
• You have until 30 June 2026 to submit your entries via the dedicated portal Optimise.
• Please comply with our basic code of honour. The ACT reserves the right to exclude users from the competition if they abuse the evaluation system.

Scoring and Winner Selection

This year, SpOC contains three challenges, of which two are mandatory and one is a tie-breaker. In detail, you will obtain a local score $s_i$ for the Luna Tomato Logistics challenge and for the Keplerian Tomato Traveling Salesperson challenge, each computed via the the rules below, then your global score is the sum of the two. The global score defines your place on the overall SpOC leaderboard. Ties are broken with the score of the Luna Tomato Advertising challenge.

The two main challenges contain three problems of different difficulty. Every problem has its own leaderboard (visible on Optimise) that ranks participants according to the objective of the challenge. The top ten ranks on the leaderboard of an easy instances get $e_i=10,9,8,\dots,1$ points, similarly $m_i=\frac{4}{3}10,\frac{4}{3}9,\dots,\frac{4}{3}$ points for the top ten teams on medium problems, and $h_i=(\frac{4}{3})^2 10,(\frac{4}{3})^2 9,\dots,(\frac{4}{3})^2$ points for hard problems. The score of the challenge is determined by the sum of the scores obtained in the individual problems.

We wish all participants the best of luck and are excited to see what you accomplish!

Timeline

The Space Optimization Competition starts at the first of April, End of Day, Anywhere on Earth (AoE):

• 1 April, End of Day, AoE Submissions open
• 30 June, End of Day, AoE Submissions closes
• GECCO 2026, Winner Announcement

NOTE: The submission portal remains open after 30 June 2026, End of Day, Anywhere on Earth (AoE). Submissions received after that date will not be taken into consideration for the competition, but still appear on the leaderboard.

Contact

Our primary means of communication with competitors will be the Discussions feature on this repository. Please use it to ask any questions you may have about the challenges or to exchange information with us. We will do our best to respond to your questions in a timely manner.

If you encounter a bug in the code, please use this repository's Issues feature to report it.