Real-world applications of AI Planning often require a highly expressive modeling language to accurately capture important intricacies of target systems. Hybrid systems are ubiquitous in the real-world, and PDDL+ is the standardized modeling language for capturing such systems as planning domains. PDDL+ enables accurate encoding of mixed discrete-continuous system dynamics, exogenous activity, and many other interesting features exhibited in realistic scenarios. However, the uptake in usage of PDDL+ has been slow and apprehensive, largely due to a general shortage of PDDL+ planning software, and rigid limitations of the few existing planners. To overcome this chasm, we present Nyx, a novel PDDL+ planner built to emphasize lightness, simplicity, and, most importantly, adaptability. The planner is designed to be effortlessly customizable to expand its capabilities well beyond the scope of PDDL+. As a result, Nyx can be tailored to virtually any potential real-world application requiring some form of AI Planning, paving the way for wider adoption of planning methods for solving real-world problems.

Using FIRE (Feedback In Realistic Environments) simulations, astronomers are able to model groups of stars, revealing the origin of these stellar furnaces. Starting models soon after the Big Bang, this simulation, one of the largest models of its type, shows how galaxies form into the formations we see today. Even using supercomputers, these nine simulations took months to complete. The GAIA spacecraft, launched in 2013, is on a mission to create 3D maps of a billion stars in and beyond the Milky Way. The observatory provides the motions of one billion stars.