Mission milestones push the state-of-the-art in astrodynamics

ABSTRACT

After a seven-month cruise phase, NASA's Mars 2020 mission reached the red planet in February to deliver its Perseverance rover with a sky crane landing, the touchdown system that brought Curiosity to Mars in 2012. The target for this mission was the Jezero Crater, with a final landing zone requirement allowing just 2.8 kilometers of position uncertainty. The orbit determination and trajectory maneuvers implemented by a navigation team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California landed the rover within 1 km of the target, well within the requirement, placing the rover in the precise location it needed to complete its mission objectives--all with most of the team working remotely due to covid-19 restrictions.