Any evolutionary computing research group is free to enter this year’s SpOC contest. Formally beginning on 1 April, the competition will last for three months. The winners will be announced at this July’s Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference, GECCO, in Lisbon, Portugal.

Organised by ESA’s ACT and hosted by GECCO, SpOC 2023 involves three specific optimisation challenges, explains ACT researcher Emmanuel Blazquez: “The scenario takes place in a future where humans have spread out across many different solar systems. They are seeking to rendezvous at a single planet targeted for exploration using a network of wormholes that teleport them to different nodes through both time and space, aboard motherships that aim to arrive at around the same time. So the first challenge is to get them there in a synchronised, efficient manner.