In 2098, To make it easier for astrophysicists to do their jobs, one enterprising individual came forward to write a piece of software which would become well known over the years as the go-to for stellar cartography, cataloguing planets, and even detecting life. SCART became extremely important, as it singlehandedly showed humanity just how diverse the cosmos is.
History
One person is known as the godfather of SCART, and personally wrote the initial version. His name was Manjuelo Martinse, and he was born in what was then San Diego, California. Back then, it was simply known as Star Retrieval System (or SRT), but he intended it to eventually be used to look for life in other star systems. With the discovery of the Kya in 2039, the race was on to discover life totally independent of the Sol system, and Manjuelo thought his software suite was the best bet at the time for doing so. So he went to then-NASA for an official license to develop it further. The alpha version he showed them was extremely buggy, and caused a small fire at one of the workstations, but even so, NASA saw potential in it, and gave the go ahead for Manjuelo to continue developing it, with NASA oversight.
The first version was released in 2103, and NASA immediately began testing, using the far superior Arecibo II space telescope, which was constructed when the original Arecibo Space Telescope in Puerto Rico was destroyed. It was built in the same spot as the latter. This first version was extremely sluggish, but that was due to the fact that NASA did not have computers which were powerful enough to run SRT adequately. When the initial return DID come back, NASA was dumbfounded. Within 10 light years, SRT found 2 instances of life in other star systems, the first being around Proxima Centauri, which was popularly known as being the best chance for extraterrestrial life for decades prior, but now came absolute rock-solid proof.
The second hit was the 6th planet around the star Ross 154, and the archaic system indicated this Frozen Ice Giant had unicelluar life. NASA was awestruck. Within 2 hours, SRT had found two systems with life. While they catalogued the unicelluar life, more attention was paid to "Proxima 4", where the system had indicated "Exotic Terrestrial and Marine Life". Telescopes at the time were unable to discern the planet with any level of detail, but with the new system, and techniques of the 2100s CE, both were able to combine to create an amazing tentative picture of this world. While the planet could only be resolved looking like a fuzzy red dot only a few tens of pixels wide, that combined with SRT data was enough to confirm exotic volitiles in the atmosphere capable of forming complex chains, and thus, life.
Further Development and Refining
Even so, a massive hurdle was imminent, and to clear it, Manjuelo would have to make the scanning algorythm faster. To do this, he delved deep into the code which interfaced with the scanning suites of the time, and found more than 300 lines of code that could be modified to interface with those suites much faster. Version 2.0 was released the following year, and boasted scan times of up to 50% shorter than the version before. However, this came at a cost. Scans were faster, yes, but were now extremely inefficient to the point it completely missed star systems that NASA knew were there. NASA realized that the sluggishness of the first version was there to accurately catalog systems, and ordered the changes be reversed.
Death of the Programmer
3.0 came out in another year, and Manjuelo started to get extremely frustrated with NASA. All this back and forth was grating on him to the point that one day, in a complete rage, he burst into the NASA administrators office.
"You wanted me to make you some software, fine. You want me to debug it, fine, but why don't you mooks trust me when I say that I did the best I could, and that YOUR SYSTEMS are too weak to handle my code? The REASON it is "so slow", Mr. Administrator, is not because of some bugs in the code. None of your machines are powerful enough to run it the way I have envisioned. So if you want this software, FINE, HERE, HAVE IT."
He then threw the master disk with the software on it onto the Administrators desk and stormed out. An analysis of the software was conducted, and it was found that, indeed, the software was a bit too nuanced for the computer systems of the time to handle with any semblance of speed. As soon as NASA heads realized this, they immediately got to work trying to locate Manjuelo to rehire him, as they were wrong. They found him a bit too late though, as it was discovered that Manjuelo took his own life. NASA hurt him more than they thought, it seemed, and solemly began to develop the software, renaming it to the Star Cataloguing and Retrieval System, or SCART, to honor Mr. Martinse's memory.
NASA Realizes
As computers began to get more powerful, NASA began to see what the nuanced program could really do. In the 2200sCE, they finally managed to learn what the program could do, and finally began to add their own code to it, which expanded the capabilities of SCART drastically. The program was responsible for at least 4 first contacts in the years spanning 2238 to 2245 alone.
While the program is no longer used in full as of 100,000CE, the incredible contributions to science, and understanding of aliens will forever be remembered.