Entry to the 17th Annual Humies Awards for the discovery of human-competitive constellation designs 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 The result presented for consideration is captured by the article titled “Low cost satellite constellations for nearly continuous global coverage.” It was published in Nature Communications in January, 2020. Below is a complete bibliographic citation. Singh, L.A., Whittecar, W.R., DiPrinzio, M.D. et al. Low cost satellite constellations for nearly continuous global coverage. Nature Communications 11, 200 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-13865-0 2. The name, complete physical mailing address, e-mail address, and phone number of EACH author of EACH paper(s) The following provides the contact information for each of the authors involved in the work presented for consideration. Lake A. Singh (Corresponding Author) 14301 Sullyfield Cir., Unit C Chantilly, VA 20151-1622 Mail Stop: CH1-520 Email Address: lake.a.singh@aero.org Phone Number: (703) 808-2913 (office) Phone Number: (404) 788-0149 (mobile) William R. Whittecar 14301 Sullyfield Cir., Unit C Chantilly, VA 20151-1622 Mail Stop: CH1-510 Email Address: William.r.whittecar@aero.org Phone Number: (571) 304-7564 Marc D. DiPrinzio 14301 Sullyfield Cir., Unit C Chantilly, VA 20151-1622 Mail Stop: CH1-510 Email Address: marc.d.diprinzio@aero.org Phone Number: (571) 304-7557 Jonathan D. Herman 3138 Ghausi Hall University of California, Davis Davis, CA 95616 Email Address: jdherman@ucdavis.edu Phone Number: (530) 752-8870 Matthew P. Ferringer 14301 Sullyfield Cir., Unit C Chantilly, VA 20151-1622 Mail Stop: CH3-300 Email Address: matthew.p.ferringer@aero.org Phone Number: (571) 304-7736 Patrick M. Reed 211 Hollister Hall Ithaca, NY 14853-3501 Email Address: patrick.reed@cornell.edu Phone Number: 607-255-2024 3. The name of the corresponding author (i.e., the author to whom notices will be sent concerning the competition) The corresponding Author is Lake Singh. 4. The abstract of the paper(s) Here is our paper’s abstract: Satellite services are fundamental to the global economy, and their design reflects a tradeoff between coverage and cost. Here, we report the discovery of two alternative 4-satellite constellations with 24- and 48-hour periods, both of which attain nearly continuous global coverage. The 4-satellite constellations harness energy from nonlinear orbital perturbation forces (e.g., Earth’s geopotential, gravitational effects of the sun and moon, and solar radiation pressure) to reduce their propellant and maintenance costs. Our findings demonstrate that small sacrifices in global coverage at user-specified longitudes allow operationally viable constellations with significantly reduced mass-to-orbit costs and increased design life. The 24-hour period constellation reduces the overall required vehicle mass budget for propellant by approximately 60% compared to a geostationary Earth orbit constellation with similar coverage over typical satellite lifetimes. Mass savings of this magnitude permit the use of less expensive launch vehicles, installation of additional instruments, and substantially improved mission life. 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 Our result presented for consideration satisfies criteria A, B, D, E, F, and G. 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) The following explains why our result satisfies each of the claimed criteria: (A) The result was patented as an invention in the past, is an improvement over a patented invention, or would qualify today as a patentable new invention. Draim successfully patented his constellation design which theoretically achieves continuous global coverage with four satellites in 1989 (US Patent Number 4,854,527). However, that design was later determined to be prohibitively expensive to maintain and has thus never been used. The constellations discovered in our work provide nearly the same quality of coverage, and are by contrast inexpensive to maintain and feasible for real-world applications. The discovered constellations thus represent an improvement over the patented Draim constellation design in terms of practical implementation and broader utility to remote sensing, communications, as well as navigation applications. (B) The result is equal to or better than a result that was accepted as a new scientific result at the time when it was published in a peer-reviewed scientific journal. The Draim constellation was originally reported in the Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics in 1986: Draim, J. A common-period four-satellite continuous global coverage constellation. Journal of Guidance, Control, and Dynamics. 10, 492–499 (1986). At the time, it represented a new scientific result as the first discovery that continuous global coverage was achievable with four satellites (a reduction from five from Walker’s work on the subject). He arrived at this discovery via an elegant application of a geometry proof. The mathematical assumptions and simplifications required in the original proof hindered Draim in fully accounting for perturbing forces and higher fidelity considerations, although he was aware of them. The constellation design results submitted for consideration here were discovered by an evolutionary algorithm in a massively parallel simulation-optimization framework that provides the benefit of direct simulation of the orbital mechanics needed to better account for and take advantage of these perturbing forces. This transitions the perturbing forces from being a severe disadvantage to instead aiding sustained performance and reducing costs. (D) The result is publishable in its own right as a new scientific result independent of the fact that the result was mechanically created. The results submitted for consideration are published in our Nature Communications paper. (E) The result is equal to or better than the most recent human-created solution to a long-standing problem for which there has been a succession of increasingly better human-created solutions. The result presented for consideration is an advancement when compared to the most recent human-created solution to the long-standing Draim global coverage problem. The problem is providing continuous global coverage with a minimum number of satellites. Practically speaking, most mission planners approximate global coverage from geostationary orbits with three vehicles, but those sorts of designs sacrifice all access to polar regions. As early as 1970, Walker identified that global continuous coverage could be sustained with as few as five satellites. He even noted at that time that “…whole earth coverage cannot be maintained at all times with less than five satellites.” Draim would later demonstrate that statement to be false with his discovered constellation design, which saves an entire satellite. However, although his constellation design is theoretically possible to implement, it is not practical because it is prohibitively expensive to maintain the state of the constellation over the lifetime of a typical spacecraft. Our result presented for consideration in this competition has now advanced that search by overcoming that practical limitation with the same number of satellites at a minor cost in coverage which is likely acceptable for many real-world applications. Here is a citation for Walker’s original 1970 work: Walker, J. Circular Orbit Patterns Providing Continuous Whole Earth Coverage. Report (Royal Aircraft Establishment, 1970). (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 constellation designs presented for consideration exceeds that of Walker by requiring fewer vehicles, and exceeds that of Draim by providing a) drastically reduced costs for orbit maintenance, and b) utility for real applications. (G) The result solves a problem of indisputable difficulty in its field. The problem of minimizing a constellation size while attaining continuous global coverage is one that has been studied for over half a century. The results we present for consideration in this competition offer an unquestionable advancement in bringing prior theoretical limits forward into a form which is actually useful in a practical context by space mission planners. We would stop short of claiming that we have solved the problem, in that we acknowledge there is no single unique solution to the general problem which will satisfy all real missions. What we have accomplished is the discovery of a new portion of the trade-space available to mission planners that has never before been explored or considered.Our result advances the state of the art because our evolutionary simulation-optimization framework allowed to us to directly account for severely nonlinear dynamical complexities and the myriad of practical design considerations that are critical to real world implementation. 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) Here is a complete citation and DOI for our paper: Singh, L.A., Whittecar, W.R., DiPrinzio, M.D. et al. Low cost satellite constellations for nearly continuous global coverage. Nature Communications 11, 200 (2020). 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 equally among the co-authors. 9. A statement stating why the authors expect that their entry would be the "best” The question of optimizing coverage with a minimum number of satellites is a classic and enduring problem for constellation designers and space mission planners. Building infrastructure in space is unquestionably expensive, often almost prohibitively so. It is the job of constellation designers to maximize the value returned from those investments by configuring constellation designs to maximize the access they offer to the Earth for their various payloads. At the same time, the constellation designer must seek to minimize the size of the investment necessary to build their design in order to drive it into the realm of affordability. The results presented for consideration in this competition offer a major advancement to the state of the art in this field through the evolutionary search-based discovery of implementable 4-satellite constellations that overcome the severe limitations of the theorized Draim constellation design patented over 30 years ago. Our paper demonstrates key practical advantages between the reported constellations and the Draim design as well as the widely employed geostationary constellation design. Although those results reported are attractive on their own, they were discovered using a many-objective evolutionary optimization framework that permits the broader discovery of design variants that can be tailored to an individual mission’s own unique needs and preferences across its performance tradeoffs. The world’s use of, and dependence on space is rapidly increasing. Advances in understanding how and where we can place our space systems to maximize their value directly impacts our ability to exploit this valuable resource. The results presented for consideration move a math problem of great importance into application space where it can have practical use, and offers an example of a framework for doing so for any mission seeking to use results in this class. Below we provide a few independent sources that support the importance of our discovery: • Altmetric Impact Score for our Paper = 157 (98th percentile of all peer reviewed publications of the same age and 94th percentile of all Nature Communications papers of the same age, see https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-13865-0/metrics) • Media coverage by 19 major global news outlets including a feature story in the MIT Technology Review • US National Science Foundation statement related to our contribution: "This research project is important for geoscientists, information technologists, and researchers in many other areas of science and engineering," says Edward Walker, a program director in NSF's Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering. "The discovery has important implications for global commerce and national defense vital to our country.” https://www.nsf.gov/discoveries/disc_summ.jsp?cntn_id=299851&org=NSF&from=news 10. An indication of the general type of genetic or evolutionary computation used, such as GA (genetic algorithms), GP (genetic programming), ES (evolution strategies), EP (evolutionary programming), LCS (learning classifier systems), GE (grammatical evolution), GEP (gene expression programming), DE (differential evolution), etc. We employed the Borg Many-objective Evolutionary Algorithm (MOEA) in this work. The Borg MOEA is a hyper-heuristic evolutionary search framework that uses closed-loop internal feedbacks to opportunistically self-adapt its ensemble of variational operators, selective pressure, and search population. In this study, a massively parallel variant of the Borg MOEA was run on the University of Illinois’s Blue Waters supercomputer with typical usage of >100,000 compute cores to accommodate the incorporation of advanced orbital mechanics and constellation controls within simulated function evaluations (i.e., resolving and exploiting perturbation forces). To our knowledge, this represents one of the largest simulation-optimization numerical experiments ever attempted at the time of the work. 11. The date of publication of each paper. If the date of publication is not on or before the deadline for submission, but instead, the paper has been unconditionally accepted for publication and is “in press” by the deadline for this competition, the entry must include a copy of the documentation establishing that the paper meets the "in press" requirement. Our paper was published on 10 January 2020.