News

09.09.2021: The final leaderboard has been published. We congratulate the winning team: redrock! Visit our discussion page for further information on the end of the competition.

02.09.2021: A special session about this competition will be held at the Stardust-R Virtual Workshop about "Space Traffic Management and Resilient Space Environment" between 13-17 of September. The 3 best scoring teams have the opportunity to present their solution to the virtual audience. Participation to the workshop is free of charge but requires registration until (including) 04.09.2021. As the official announcement of the winners will be after this deadline, we would like to encourage you to register already to be on the safe side, in case you are interested. All information regarding the virtual workshop and the registration can be found on the Workshop website.

23.08.2021: An error in the scoring function has been fixed and all submissions have been reevaluated.

In 2026 the European Space Agency's spacecraft HERA will have completed its two years journey to the Didymos system. Its objectives are to investigate the binary asteroid and to measure in great detail the outcome of NASA's DART mission kinetic impactor test. Hera will provide unprecedented information on the kinetic impactor asteroid deflection technique.

Waiting for all of this to happen, in the "Planetary Defence Challenge", you are tasked to develop a methodology able to give preliminary insights on a (virtual) kinetic impactor mission, based on ground measurements. The light curves of a binary asteroid system are observed from the Earth before and after a kinetic impact. Can you learn from the data the real effect of the deflection effort?

Start by learning more about the challenge and the data.

This competition is organized by ESA's Advanced Concepts Team (ACT) in partnership with the H2020 MCSA ETN Stardust-R as part of the Andrea Milani Challenge.

Experts from the organizers are available for interactions via the competition discussion page.