1. The complete title of one (or more) paper(s) published in the open literature describing the work that the author claims describes a human-competitive result: "Search for a grand tour of the Jupiter Galilean moons" 2. the name, complete physical mailing address, e-mail address, and phone number of EACH author of EACH paper: Dario Izzo European Space Agency, Keplerlaan 1 2201 AZ, Noordwijk, The Netherlands. dario.izzo@esa.int Phone: +31(0)71 565 3511 Luís F. Simões Afdeling Informatica, Vrije Universiteit, Faculteit der Exacte Wetenschappen, De Boelelaan 1081a, 1081 HV Amsterdam, The Netherlands. luis.simoes@vu.nl Phone: +31610213073 Marcus Märtens European Space Agency, Keplerlaan 1 2201 AZ, Noordwijk, The Netherlands. marcus.maertens@esa.int Phone: +31(0)71 565 8354 Guido de Croon Delft University of Technology / MAV-lab, Delft, The Netherlands g.c.h.e.decroon@tudelft.nl Phone: +31(0)6 48255416 Aurelie Heritier European Space Agency, Keplerlaan 1 2201 AZ, Noordwijk, The Netherlands. aurelie.heritier@esa.int Phone: +31(0)71 565 8890 Chit Hong Yam Department of Mathematics, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology Clear Water Bay, Kowloon, Hong Kong Email: chithongyam@gmail.com Phone: +852 61929334 3. the name of the corresponding author (i.e., the author to whom notices will be sent concerning the competition) Dario Izzo 4. the abstract of the paper(s) We make use of self-adaptation in a Differential Evolution algorithm and of the asynchronous island model to design a complex interplanetary trajectory touring the Galilean Jupiter moons (Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto) using the multiple gravity assist technique. Such a problem was recently the subject of an international competition organized by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (NASA) won by a trajectory designed by aerospace experts and reaching the final score of 311/324. We apply our method to the very same problem finding new surprising designs and orbital strategies and a score of up to 316/324. 5. a list containing one or more of the eight letters (A, B, C, D, E, F, G, or H) that correspond to the criteria (see above) that the author claims that the work satisfies (C,F,H,D) 6. a statement stating why the result satisfies the criteria that the contestant claims (see examples of statements of human-competitiveness as a guide to aid in constructing this part of the submission) (C) - The result is equal to or better than a result that was placed into a database or archive of results maintained by an internationally recognized panel of scientific experts The NASA team that defined the GTOC6 problem, and served as the competiton's jury, has evaluated the solution found by our algorithm, and confirmed that it passes all validation checks (i.e. it can be flown by the spacecraft considered in the competition), and therefore constitutes the best know solution to the problem. The GTOC portal (http://sophia.estec.esa.int/gtoc_portal/), which archives all work carried out to date in the GTOC competitions, recognizes this achievement. (F) - The result is equal to or better than a result that was considered an achievement in its field at the time it was first discovered. The solution found manually by the scientists at Turin Polytechnic and “Sapienza” University of Rome that actually won the competition is still considered as an achievement in the field of interplanetary trajectory design. In November 2012, at the 23rd International Symposium on Space Flight Dynamics in Pasadena, many scientists claimed such a result, scoring 311 points, would be ‘unbeatable’, or only marginally improvable. Calculations carried out by another high ranking team suggested the maximum achievable score on this problem would be 314. Our method was able to automatically identify strategies which enabled a score of 316, thus mapping 5 more moon faces with a significantly increased scientific return for the mission. (H) - The result holds its own or wins a regulated competition involving human contestants (in the form of either live human players or human-written computer programs). An earlier version of our algorithm (used by team 6) ranked second in the GTOC6 competition (http://sophia.estec.esa.int/gtoc_portal/wp-content/uploads/2012/11/ACT-RPT-MAD-GTOC6-ranks.pdf) and was, together with the winning solution, the only interplanetary trajectory scoring more than 300 points and mapping almost all of the Galilean moons. (D) - The result is publishable in its own right as a new scientific result ¾ independent of the fact that the result was mechanically created. The trajectory strategy that emerged from our algorithm’s execution (a strategy we are now calling moon hopping) is different from that used by experts whose design typically revisit the same moon entirely before moving to the next moon. This last startegy would have been considered as the most meaningful design by most practicioners before our result came out beating it by using frequent moon hoppings. 7. a full citation of the paper (that is, author names; publication date; name of journal, conference, technical report, thesis, book, or book chapter; name of editors, if applicable, of the journal or edited book; publisher name; publisher city; page numbers, if applicable) Izzo D., Simões, L.F., Märtens, M, de Croon G., Heritier A., Hong Yam C.: "Search for a grand tour of the Jupiter Galilean moons" to be published in Proceedings of the 15th annual conference on Genetic and evolutionary computation, ACM, 2013 8. a statement either that "any prize money, if any, is to be divided equally among the co-authors" OR a specific percentage breakdown as to how the prize money, if any, is to be divided among the co-authors Any prize money, if any, is to be divided among the six authors according to the following split (30%,30%,15%,5%,5%,15%) 9. a statement stating why the judges should consider the entry as "best" in comparison to other entries that may also be "human-competitive." The Global Trajectory Optimization Competition (GTOC) periodically gathers the top worldwide experts on interplanatery trajectory design around a common problem, which is designed so as to be especially hard and to force the different experts to go beyond what their current methods can deliver. It is meant as a forum for the cross-fertilization of ideas in this field. In the context of the 6th edition of the competition, NASA defined one of the hardest problems put forth yet, which is actually relevant to the JEO concepts (Jupiter Europa Orbiter) currently under consideration at NASA. For a period of 1 month in 2012, experts from across the globe designed solutions to this problem, making use of the best practices known to the field. It was in this context that the work being presented here emerged. In a reconizably difficult and high stakes domain, not only did our approach based on Evolutionary Computing methods deliver “human-competitive” results (greatly exceeding the scores obtained by all but one team), but it also was able to automatically identify strategies to solve the problem that were unknown, and thus unused, by any of the other teams. Post-competition work enabled us to further improve our method, and with it obtain what is the best known solution to this difficult real-world problem. Should the Jupiter Europa Orbiter mission go forward, our result shows how a multiple fly-by trajectory can be designed automatically achieveing a similar scientific return with respect to the baseline orbiter mission. Our entry is not only beating trajectories designed by human experts, it is also teaching a lesson: out of the teams that found a solution to the trajectory competition problem, our approach was the only that turned out to exploit rapid changes between the moons, whereas most other competitive results fully mapped one moon at a time before proceeding to other moons. Thus, the mere existence of a convenient dynamic moon-hoping sequence was one of the biggest surprises for the domain experts as pointed out when results were presented at the 23rd International Symposium on Space Flight Dynamics in Pasadena. By that we introduce not only a better solution, but a new strategy into the related domain.