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The Mathematics of Scheduling: Directed...
Internet Excursions
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The Hubble Space Telescope
The Hubble Space Telescope (HST), named after astronomer Edwin Hubble, was launched into orbit on
April 25, 1990. By sending a telescope above the earth's atmosphere, modern-day astronomers have
obtained a much clearer view of the planets, the stars, and other galaxies that is about ten times
clearer than achievable from the surface of earth.
Naturally, the tremendous demand for the telescope has led to a horrendously complex scheduling
problem. Many of the projects can only be accommodated at a certain time of the day or a certain time
of the year, and last-minute adjustments are frequently necessary when the instruments behave in
unexpected ways. A computer program called
Spike
has been developed to use artificial intelligence (AI) techniques to schedule the telescope as
efficiently as possible.
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